


Over Stair and Under Stair

by khorazir



Series: Over/Under [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Baker Street, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, London, Pining, Post Reichenbach, Pre-Slash, Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-27
Updated: 2013-04-19
Packaged: 2017-12-03 20:11:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khorazir/pseuds/khorazir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After nine months abroad, a weary, anxious yet curious Sherlock sets foot into 221B again …</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a direct sequel to [_Over Ground and Under Ground_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/649188), the second part of my Over/Under series. It can be read separately, though. 
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: non-explicit references to violence and bloodshed

Baker Street’s houses are mostly dark. The street is uncharacteristically empty of people when the cab pulls up at the corner. Sherlock has told the cabbie to stop there and not go directly to 221B because he feels he needs to walk these last few yards. So he searches in his coat for some money in the appropriate currency, pays and gets out, slinging his messenger bag over his shoulder again and turning up his collar. He feels he needs this additional layer of protection. He is nervous. Anxious, even. He doesn’t like it, this lack of control over his emotions. He detests the baser, more primitive processes striving for control in his body, trying to circumvent his brain. This isn’t him, he tells himself. Sherlock Holmes doesn’t get homesick. This is just an address like any other, a pile of bricks with glass and slate and metal pipes. He can live anywhere. It doesn’t make any difference. He tells himself that, too. 

Sherlock Holmes is a bloody liar, and lucky for him he doesn’t listen to himself all the time. He has been yearning for this pile of bricks for the past nine months, ever since that night when Lestrade and half of Scotland Yard arrived at 221B with an arrest warrant. The night he was dragged out of his home in handcuffs like a common criminal, pushed roughly against a police car and searched, for weapons, drugs, some evidence to prove he was indeed a fraud. Public humiliation, vengeance for years of arrogant brilliance, whatever else those petty officers wanted to make him an example of. Well, he didn’t remain alone for long. John joined him after he’d chinned the Chief Superintendent. Sherlock had known even then that it would be a while until he’d see Baker Street again, but he never anticipated that it was going to take that long, and that the separation would be that painful. Sentiment all over again. He thought he was immune, but one is bound to make a wrong deduction without considering all the facts at hand. He _does_ feel, and he _does_ care. And it does hurt.

They stir in him now as he gazes down the familiar street, those much reviled sentiments: relief to be back, anxiety about his reception, fear of the barrage of memories he is inevitably going to be assailed by as soon as he steps over the threshold of 221B. He feels inadequately equipped to deal with them. Never been his forte, feelings. He used to be so good at keeping them in check. But the time abroad has worn him down, worn him out.

Suddenly, his eagerness to be back seems ill advised, ridiculous, even. He is seriously tempted to turn around. Find a place to stay the night and come here refreshed in the morning. As if he could sleep tonight, despite the weariness of a two-day train journey and nine months of hardship and darkness in his bones. No, it has to be now. He’s been away too long.

Wouldn’t it be kinder, though, if he stayed away? He considers this briefly. Those he left behind have settled into new lives, and he, too, has changed. Why tear up old wounds again? Why not simply vanish for good? Begin anew elsewhere. Cases and riddles can be found all over the world. Wouldn’t it be gentler for all involved, more selfless, if Sherlock Holmes stayed dead for good?

He snorts with derision. When has he ever acted selflessly? Even his jump from Bart’s roof hasn’t been selfless. He saved his friends because … well, because what is he really without them? He needs them. He hates to admit it. But he does. And therefore, he must endure whatever there is to endure to win them back. 

 

**- <o>-**

 

At first glance, not much seems to have changed in the street. Some cars he has not seen before are parked left and right. The flat opposite 221B has finally been renovated and seems to have acquired new occupants. Do they know that it wasn’t a gas-leak that destroyed half the house but a bomb, planted there by a genius psychopath to get him, Sherlock Holmes, to join in a wicked game? Sherlock remembers how he had leapt at the challenge, how he had burned with glorious energy on the trail of each new riddle, how he had revelled in his own brilliance. Until the Pool. Until he had seen John weighed down by explosives under that ugly parka. Until he had understood how he was not the only one enmeshed in the game, not the only one who might lose.

The Game is over now, but has he won? James Moriarty is dead. Some of the more elevated heads in the hierarchy of his remaining criminal empire have rolled. But Sherlock has only managed to cut off the tip of the iceberg. There are others he has not reached, people with serious connections and protection beyond his influence. People for his brother to deal with eventually, when they become inconvenient or a threat to Queen and Country – or to the family.

Sherlock is not done, either. Only, he can’t continue to operate like he has these past months. Constantly on the hunt (or the run), no base of operations, no safe retreat, too little food, rest, shelter. Too much violence, bloodshed, dubious dealings beyond the murky fringes of legality. He has caused people to be killed, even killed himself. He still tells himself it has been necessary. Perhaps it has been. But it has frightened him, him who has seen so many dead bodies in his life, often even craved their sight and the riddles they bore for his ever active, ever demanding brain to solve. This has been different: to look at a body and know that oneself has been the one that put it there, to know precisely how life had left it, because traces of the demise still stain one’s own hands. He did not enjoy the killings, far from that. It shocked him how easy it could be, how naturally he was able to sleep afterwards, how indifferently he had slipped into the role of murderer.

No, what he has done makes him little better than those people he has hunted. He can claim it has been for the noble cause of saving his friends. He _has_ saved them, after all, hasn’t he? But he has also caused them unspeakable anguish, John foremost.

He wavers were he stands. John does not live at 221B anymore so he won’t meet him there today, but the memory of their time at the flat lingers and it causes both hurt and longing. But John has moved out, moved on, too. The most recent photographs of him Sherlock has seen showed him in the company of a woman. They were courtesy of Mycroft and his security cameras, two of which, Sherlock notices, watch the entrance of his old abode, and two others the street. Sherlock cannot deduce much about this friend of John’s from the grainy shots, yet he knows what it means. With the absence of a jealous, ingenious flatmate to sabotage his dates, John is bound to be successful to find and moreover keep a female.

Oh yes, Sherlock is jealous. Had he always ensured and cherished his solitude and autonomy in the past, his cohabitation with John has spoiled him. He has been desperately lonely these past months, far more so than he ever anticipated he would be. All attempts at battling these unwelcome emotions, all tries to delete John and the memories of their time together failed miserably. His hard drive refused to be partitioned and rewired like that. John remains engraved into the structure of his brain, and, reluctant though he is to admit it, his heart. A chemical defect, he once called it, and he still sticks to that definition. Fact is, though, that he appears to be as defective as the sorry rest of humanity.

A gust of wind tears at his coat and ruffles his hair. There will be more rain later tonight, by the smell of it, snow even. Winter is reluctant to depart this year. Better get indoors. And there is only one door to pass through. It’s black with brass lettering and an ornate brass knocker. _Enough dithering_ , Sherlock tells himself sternly. It’s time for action. He’s no coward, after all. Squaring his shoulders, he begins to walk down the street.

 

**- <o>-**

 

221B is dark. Next door, Speedy’s has already closed for the day, a large blind covering their window. Sherlock waits on the other side of the road, watching his old abode. There is no indication whether Mrs. Hudson is home, although it is to be expected at this time and day of the week. It’s unlikely her habits have changed significantly. Actually, her being home is inconvenient. Sherlock wants to have a look around the first floor on his own. Not for sentimental reasons (he tells himself), but because he needs to see what has changed, and whether there might be any danger, for himself or others, in case he is watched and recognised. Mycroft’s minions are keeping their eyes on Baker Street, but likely they are not the only ones.

Briefly, he considers approaching the flat from the other side, via the small secluded courtyard. It used to be fairly easy to climb over Mrs. Hudson’s bins and up the drain to reach either the kitchen window or the one of his bedroom. Even with his decreased strength due to injury, exhaustion and malnourishment he should manage to pull himself up. He decides against an attempt, however, in favour of simply slipping in quietly through the front door. He’s still got the key, after all, and if he is careful enough and avoids the steps that creak, he should get past his former landlady. He consults his watch. 8:48pm. _Coronation Street_ will be on, and Mrs. Hudson distracted.

With another glance up and down the deserted street, he crosses over to the black door. His heart begins to pound in his chest. Rising levels of adrenaline and other stress hormones, he knows. Simple biochemistry. Inconvenient right now, though. His hand trembles very faintly until he notices and forces it to still when he reaches out to lightly run his fingers over the brass lettering. 221B. Retrieving the key from the pocket of his trousers, he inserts it into the lock. It doesn’t fit. Obviously, the lock has been exchanged in his absence. He feels a stab at the realisation. Sentiment, again. God, has he really come so low? It’s completely irrational, this sense of abandonment. They think he is dead. Why shouldn’t they replace the lock? They’re not trying to keep him out on purpose, are they? And who are ‘they’ anyway? It’s just Mrs. Hudson now.

Still, locks of this make are rather an insult to Sherlock’s housebreaking skills, and exchanging the key for a Swiss army knife from the depths of his bag, he makes short work of it. The door swings open. There is a light underneath the door of Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen, apart from that the hallway is dark. Muted conversation from the television is murmuring through the closed door. Sherlock puts away the knife and steps across the threshold.

Immediately, his senses are attacked by a myriad of impressions, and he finds himself unable to ward them off. They conjure up memories so strong that he reels, clutching the doorframe for support. He puts the sudden dizziness down to hypoglycaemia and dehydration. He really should have eaten some more of those Maltesers on the Eurostar, or even a proper meal during his intermittent stay at Brussels. But it’s not only his body succumbing to fatigue, his mind is affected as well. Images are flooding it, brought on by the smell of wood polish, laundry detergent, Mrs. Hudson’s chicken curry, tea, the spicy potpourri on the small table against the wall opposite the staircase. It smells so overwhelmingly familiar that he closes his eyes for a moment, just breathing. He recalls other instances of standing in the hallway, heart beating feverishly, body taut with adrenaline: after a case, a chase, or simply a brisk stroll back from Angelo’s. Leaning against the wall giggling like a madman, turning his head to gaze at John’s flushed face and silly grin when he is sure the other isn’t looking to see the longing in Sherlock’s eyes. Those were the best moments of their time together.

 _Still smells like home_ , Sherlock’s mind suggests, _only John’s scent is missing_. He shakes his head to clear it. God, what is it today with him? Has he really been that sickeningly homesick that he has to stand here like an idiot sniffing the hallway. _Get a bloody grip, man_ , he tells himself forcefully. _Get yourself up the stairs, or else Mrs. Hudson will catch you._

Pushing away from the frame, he carefully shuts the door behind him. The hallway is plunged into darkness, but he does not need any light to find his way up the seventeen steps. _Careful, though_ , he reminds himself. _Watch out for those that creak._ His feet act of their own accord, finding the right places to step, and his body remembers where to put weight and where not. Like the ghost he has pretended to be for nine months, he glides up the stairs, only to pause on the landing.

The door of his former flat is open. Most likely Mrs. Hudson has been in to dust recently. Or can there have been a viewing, a person or party interested in renting the place? He bends down to study the marks on floor and carpet. The light from the streetlamps illuminating the living-room beyond is barely sufficient. It has rained and snowed today and during the previous days. Had people been in here recently other than Mrs. Hudson in her slippers, there would have been marks since the floor hasn’t been cleaned in a while.

Straightening up again, he hesitates. He can already see a part of the room by the light coming through the two large windows facing Baker Street. Slowly, he steps into the room. What he descries causes the heart he often wishes he doesn’t have to ache yet again.

Nothing seems to have changed. There is the desk and the antelope skull with the headphones, the stacks of newspapers and women’s magazines on the windowsills half hidden by the heavy curtains. There’s the round lamp in the corner behind the couch. There is, he notices as he takes some further steps inside the living-room, even the ridiculous smiley still on the wall, resplendent with its bullet holes. The sofa and the two armchairs have been covered with white cloth, the bookshelves are mostly empty, and so is the mantelpiece. The skull is gone, as are the Lucky Cat and the stack of letters fastened by his knife. But the mirror is still there, and the carpet, and the skull painting, and – he cannot help but smile at this – his bat and beetle collection in the glass case and the other artworks scattered about the room. Even the black coral skeleton still resides on the shelf next to the window. It’s almost as if the more ‘normal’ paraphernalia of his life have been taken away, packed in boxes, perhaps, and sold or given to charity, while the unusual, the interesting, the unique items have been left behind. The smell is different, though. Stale, with a faint whiff of cleaning products. There is barely any dust on the surfaces, so Mrs. Hudson _has_ been around to clean.

He turns slowly in the midst of the room, taking in every missing and still existent detail. His violin is gone and his sheet music. He feels a stab at their absence, particularly the Strad’s. Of all the items he possessed, this was the most precious. Has Mycroft taken it? John? They wouldn’t have sold it, would they?

Carefully, to prevent his footsteps from being heard downstairs, he makes his way into the kitchen. It looks strange in its bare tidiness. The appliances are still there, except for the kettle. He wonders whether John might have taken it. All his science equipment is gone. The fridge has been unplugged. He wonders who has had the pleasure of cleaning it and the freezer, and what happened to the contents. Did Molly receive them back? Or were they thrown away? Some were fairly dangerous and would have needed special disposal. Were they buried, the still recognisable human remains? Well, they’re gone. Several months of experiments, wasted. And there had been some really rare and fascinating specimens in his collection. He’s unlikely to be as lucky and get a part of a genuine bog body again, particularly one with the tissue turned all leathery and the skeletal remains decalcified by peaty bog water like those of the Lindow Man. And his microscope, that was a real treasure, too. One wouldn’t have thrown it out, would one? Or simply given it away?

Shaking his head, he moves on down the corridor to his former room. His bed is also covered in a large sheet, otherwise the room looks virtually unchanged save for a couple of cardboard boxes in front of the wardrobe. He steps over to them and opens one to look inside. Ah, there is some of the glassware from his kitchen-lab. Excellent. Another box contains clothes: his shirts and trousers neatly stacked, covered by a layer of his socks thrown in haphazardly. So much for his index. It’s going to take ages to sort them by colour, length and state of wear again.

Pushing the boxes aside, he glances inside the wardrobe. His jackets still hang there, as do two of his robes. The blue silk one is missing. His case notes are still there, too, neatly sorted into their folders. Straightening and gazing about the room, he wonders at how little about the place has been altered. Given that he has been away for nearly a year and John has left, too, he assumed they would have gotten rid of most of his stuff, or that Mycroft had caused it to be put into storage. Like this, the flat almost looks like a museum, like an image of his former life preserved through the objects he handled. _A shrine,_ flashes through his mind, and he berates himself. He may consider his person a cut above the rest of humanity most of the time but if anything, the past months have shown him that he is as fallible, weak and emotional as the rest of them, if somewhat cleverer, more resourceful and observant.

No shrine, then. Nobody would put up a shrine for him. In their eyes, he has done nothing noteworthy apart from solving a few crimes. No sacrifice, no martyrdom. A memorial, perhaps? His name has been cleared, he read about it in the papers and found word of it on the internet. There have been investigations, and even a viral campaign involving leaflets and graffiti. People stated their believe in him in garish lettering and photocopied paperwork. He should feel venerated, touched, even, but at the moment all of this seems far away. There are other, more pressing things at hand, and only one person whose good opinion is important to him, as it has been ever since they met in that lab at Bart’s.

Leaving the bedroom, he passes the bathroom. He needs to use the toilet, but fears he’ll be heard if he does. It’s not quite time yet to reveal himself to his former landlady, and when he does, he prefers to face her elsewhere than in the bathroom. He allows himself a brief smile as he imagines Mrs. Hudson encountering him there and telling him off for not sitting down. He recalls the discussions with her and John about proper conduct on the toilet because he didn’t see the point. In the end he bowed to their combined threats of him having to clean the bathroom in future if he didn’t, to find that sitting down and gazing at the tiles or the patterned shower curtain actually helped with thinking from time to time.

Right, toilet is still on the agenda, but first he must complete his inspection, must conclude the somewhat painful and yet so revealing slink down memory lane.

Heading down the corridor he takes the shortcut back to the landing. He halts in the door, listening down the stairs. Very faintly, the telly can still be heard, together with a clanging of pots. Mrs. Hudson is doing the washing up, by all accounts. The door to the cupboard where she keeps the cleaning utensils creaks slightly. She’s just closed it.

Carefully, Sherlock crosses to the stairs leading up. There is a faint layer of dust here, more visible than on the lower flight. Nobody has been using these steps for quite some time. He glides up, again knowing where not to tread to avoid unwanted sound. As he places his feet, he marvels he still remembers where exactly to do so. Even back when they were still living together he did not venture into John’s room frequently. A few times to wake the doctor at some ungodly hour because there was a case on, but on those occasions Sherlock never bothered with treading soundlessly. He pounded up the stairs, all jittery excitement and coat already half on, fiddling with his scarf or talking on the phone.

Now and again he ventured into John’s room when the doctor was out, off to work or on a date, or simply down the road to do the shopping. Sherlock went through his things, sometimes looking for the gun or ammunition, sometimes for fresh underwear when he had run out, sometimes simply out of curiosity, looking at photographs of John’s family and memorabilia of his days at school, university, in the army. He studied his medals, hidden away in a cardboard box that once contained staples as if he was ashamed of them. He thumbed through packets of photographs from trips with friends. All those details offered fascinating glimpses into the ever changing, ever fascinating, never boring riddle that constituted John Watson. Some would call it an obsession. Sherlock does not know what to call it, although if anything, the past months have made some things clearer to him. They have caused him to realise what had been dangling in front of his eyes but what he had been afraid to grasp and call it by its true name. He thinks he can now put a definition to it, a tentative, shy name. But it’s the only one that’ll fit.

There also were expeditions to John’s room at night-time when Sherlock’s skills at sneaking silently and his knowledge of creaky steps were put to the test. Those were the nights when his musings on a case or an experiment were interrupted by a quiet cry from upstairs, the sound of John suffering a nightmare. The first few times Sherlock did not react, but at some point curiosity had gotten the better of him and he had crept up to pause uncertainly in front of John’s closed door. He’d spent a good part of the night there, listening, wondering, cataloguing. A month or so later, he had opened the door and peered in, and at a much later point he had entered, standing quietly at the foot of John’s bed watching his friend toss and turn and call out in his sleep. Sherlock had put his interest down to science. PTSD, a case study in his own home. Brilliant. It had been easy to convince himself that this had been his only motivation. By now he knows better. And he knows that standing next to John and watching over him during his darkest dreams, wondering whether he should wake him, unsure of himself in this minefield of human interaction he always tried to steer clear of – it was not just scientific interest. It was interest in John. Nothing to do with his friend, not even the smallest scrap of information has Sherlock ever deleted. Waste of hard-drive? Perhaps. But password-protected, untouchable. He hasn’t even deleted the creaky steps, for God’s sake.

 

**- <o>-**

 

To his surprise, the door to John’s former bedroom is open, too. Faint orange light from the streetlamps filters through the drawn curtains and onto the landing. John always had the blinds down at night. Now the eerie lighting reveals a room stripped of all that made it familiar. The furniture is still there, what little there was: a bed, a bedside table, a desk and chair, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers. The bed is shrouded in white, as is the desk. The bookshelf stands empty, all of John’s medical books Sherlock used to ‘borrow’ from time to time, his journals, the trite thrillers and adventure stories Sherlock liked to ridicule – they are gone. There is nothing left to indicate that John Hamish Watson has ever lived here.

The realisation of what this implies hits Sherlock hard. The time of John’s abode at 221B is irrevocably over. Here, Sherlock has proof that his friend has moved on. Is there still a chance to salvage what has been broken, to make John return? Sherlock doesn’t know.

He feels tired of a sudden, the excitement of being back at his old flat having ebbed away. He sinks down onto a corner of the bed. He has sat here once, ready to bolt and vanish any second, one of his silent nightly vigils during his friend’s nightmares. John didn’t notice. Now Sherlock sits, his shoulders sagging, watching the motes of dust stirred up by his movement flicker and swirl as they pass a ray of light. The room doesn’t even smell of John anymore.

A weariness that has nothing to do with lack of sleep settles on Sherlock. He runs a hand over his eyes and down his face, feeling a trace of stubble. He’s too late. For nine months, he has not allowed himself to give in to despair, even in captivity and under duress. He has borne everything, knowing that he _must_ return. There was no other option. How naïve he has been. He sees that now. And though he tried telling himself that not all is lost, at the moment he is simply too tired to listen. It’s more appropriate to wallow in misery and heartbreak, because that’s what it feels like.

Raising his eyes, his gaze falls upon a dark object half hidden by the door. With a low groan, he rises and stalks over. His eyebrows lift in surprise. It’s his silk dressing gown, the dark-blue one he once got from Harrods for helping solve an ingenious theft in the Egyptian halls. What is it doing in John’s room?

He steps closer and runs his hand over the smooth, cool fabric, to then lean closer and sniff it. No scent of detergent. It hasn’t been washed recently, if at all since he last wore it. He thinks he can detect a faint trace of his own deodorant, together with a lingering scent of smoke. That would have been the slightly out of hand fire ensuing one of his experiments a few days prior to his departure. But why is it here? Did John bring it? Why would he have — ah. Sentiment, of course. Sherlock’s heart beats faster when he wonders whether John has actually worn the robe, walked about in the clothes of his dead best friend. Does this mean anything else than John missing him? Something deeper, perhaps? Is it wishful thinking? Why are these things so bloody complicated, and why can’t he seem to make sense of them when every teenager manages eventually? A chemical defect, indeed. Perhaps he shouldn’t have completely clamped down on all these things when he himself was an adolescent. Some preparation would be appreciated right now, some framework how to deal with his defectiveness.

And John? He left the robe behind when he took everything else from the room, as if he didn’t want a reminder of Sherlock anymore. The realisation hurts, although sensibly seen it’s a normal process. Acceptance, isn’t that supposed to be the last stage of the grieving process? Has John reached it? Does Sherlock want him to have reached it, to have made peace with past sorrow?

A faint sound, a whiff of another scent cause Sherlock to stiffen and look up, his senses on alert. Someone is coming, someone who knows their way round the house well enough to also avoid the treacherous steps. True, Sherlock has been distracted, nevertheless the person has managed to come up here without him hearing them previously. He knows he is still half hidden by the door, but they must have seen his shadow. There is a faint citrus smell of dishwashing liquid, causing his tense stance to relax slightly. Not exactly how he imagined this encounter to happen, but then again, better get it over with. He has tarried in reminiscences of the past for far too long. Time to face the present.

Drawing himself up, he steps out from behind the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's artwork for this chapter, another installment of my "[Sherlock after the Fall](http://khorazir.tumblr.com/tagged/after-the-fall)"-series: "[Reacquainting](http://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/44163639173/sherlock-after-the-fall-reacquainting-37th-in)"


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for mild violence and non-explicit references to Sherlock's dark life and deeds during the hiatus.

There is a gasp, and a hurried step backwards as if the person has to steady herself. In front of Sherlock stands Mrs. Hudson, a flowery apron slung round her hips, her right arm half raised brandishing the iron poker from Sherlock’s former fireplace, her left hand clutching a spray-can of ZIL so fiercely that her knuckles show white. Obviously she was expecting a burglar. He wonders whether she has called the police before climbing the stairs to check for herself. If he really were a criminal, she would stand little chance, despite him not doubting one second that she would use both the poker and the spray – the latter causing a small flower of pride to bloom in his chest. He knows she picked it up because she recalled him incapacitating a nasty CIA agent that way.

But despite her formidable if somewhat harebrained courage that caused her to confront the intruder without backup, all bravado seems to leave her now that she recognises the ‘burglar’. She gasps again. The poker clatters to the floor as she clutches her chest, the hand with the can wavering. Sherlock wonders whether she is going to faint, or worse, have a heart attack. He hopes not. He isn’t good with fainting folks. Usually, he’s had John to deal with them or a medical team. And Mrs. Hudson never had issues with her heart, only her hip.

She doesn’t look fainty, once the first shock has passed. Sherlock isn’t quite sure of her expression. It’s difficult to see in the dim light. He takes a step towards her. Should she lose consciousness, he can at least catch her and ease her fall. After all, her hip doesn’t seem to have gotten any better, although she doesn’t look much different from when he has last seen her. Her face has a few more lines. New blouse, hair slightly more wavy but that might be due to the steam from her washing up. He feels a strange flutter in his chest he can’t define. Apprehension, yes. Relief at seeing her well and unharmed, that too. But there is something else. He thinks that only now he realises the full extend of his loneliness in recent months. And his utter, heartbreaking relief at seeing a familiar face again. Interesting, that. He thought these things wouldn’t affect him, that he was above mere sentiment. Yet another proof that he isn’t.

He approaches another step. The can joins the poker on the floor and rolls away.

He thinks it’s time to break the spell. “Hello, Mrs. Hudson,” he says, his voice rougher than he intends. Bloody sentiment. He can’t even control his voice properly.

She moves. He steps forward to catch her, only to be thrown backwards against the wall when her fist connects with his jaw, hard. _Bloody hell_ , he thinks, _that hurts_. He tastes blood from where he has bitten his tongue. He reaches out to gingerly poke at the injury with his fingers. They come away bloodied. That wasn’t a slap, that was a proper right hook. It’s broken skin and it’s going to leave a bruise.

Steadying himself against the wall, he gazes up to where she stands, fist still balled, breathing heavily, her expression storm-clouds and thunder and lightning. He reckons he should be glad she didn’t use the poker.

“I—,” he begins by way of an explanation, anything to break the tense silence that is hovering between them, but she interrupts him, her voice a sharp hiss.

“How dare you!”

She approaches a step, and he draws in on himself and half raises his arm to ward off another blow or kick. She looks ready to beat the shit out of him. Maybe that’s what he deserves, he thinks for an instant. He’s betrayed and hurt her. Then his pride kicks in. Actually, he doesn’t deserve it. He saved her life. She should be grateful. She’d be dead now without him lying and staying away. But then again, she doesn’t know. He should tell her, make her appreciate what he has done. Didn’t he jump off a bloody roof for her sake?

Strangely, though, for one usually so apt at manipulating language to precisely serving his purpose, right now he feels at a loss for words. How indeed to express his deed and reasons adequately? Would she even understand without knowing the entire backstory, the deadly game Moriarty and he played? But some explanation he must offer, or there’s a high chance of him getting to feel the poker after all. Therefore, he makes another attempt at speaking, hoping the right words will come to him as he goes along. Why is human interaction so frightfully difficult?

“Mrs. Hudson, I can expl—,” he tries again, and is silenced once more.

“You will shut up,” she interrupts, her voice both fierce and controlled. She is angrier than he has ever seen her, even counting that nasty business back in Florida with her late husband. “For once, you will be silent.”

He shuts his mouth as she goes on, “How dare you show up here just that, creeping into the house like a common criminal? How dare you leave us like this, making us think you were dead? Without sending word, without giving even the slightest hint you were alive all this time. Did you give a toss how that made us feel? We missed you. We mourned you. We felt guilty for not realising how desperate you must have been, how lost, to jump off a roof in front of your best friend’s eyes. We thought we had failed you, me and John.” Her eyes grow wide. “Oh God, John!” she whimpers.

She claps a hand to her mouth as she begins to shake, shock finally setting in. Sherlock sees her reel. He’s on his feet in an instant, stepping to her and catching her. For a moment, she tenses and tries to push him away, but then her hands grab the lapels of his coat and she clings to him, her shoulders heaving. Carefully, unsure of proper conduct as he has very little experience with comforting distressed people, and even less with hugging, he wraps his arms around her to steady her. _She is so small and frail_ , he thinks. _I never noticed how small she is because she made up for it with her strong presence._

And she is strong, the way she clutches him. Not just her grip on him, she is strong as a person. This little breakdown, this succumbing to shock is just a minor glitch, he is sure. Her scolding will continue in no time, and he almost looks forward to it. This isn’t what he’s comfortable with, this blatant display of emotion. How to react? What to people normally do in situations like these? Where is John when he needs him? He’d know what to do. John’s good with people. He was even good with Sherlock and all his eccentricities.

Well, first of all he could make both of them more comfortable. There can’t be anything wrong with that. The way she pulls at his lapels causes him to stoop over, and his legs are still entangled in the strap of his bag which slipped from his shoulder when Mrs. Hudson punched him. Slowly, he steps out of the strap, taking care she does not step into it and fall. He leads them back into John’s former room and lowers the two of them to the corner of the bed. She doesn’t resist, doesn’t even notice.

She is sobbing in earnest now, her tears wetting his shirt. He reaches out to awkwardly pat her hair. His hand trembles ever so slightly. Interesting. Why does it do that? Is he in shock, too? He doesn’t display any other symptoms. Hypoglycaemia, perhaps? He really needs some food and drink soon. Or maybe he is just as overwhelmed as she is, only he doesn’t let it show to the same extent, experienced as he is in clamping down on his emotions. Still, he has to admit it feels good to sit like this, despite her sniffling onto his shirt and him not really knowing how to comfort her. He hasn’t even got a handkerchief. That’s what people do, don’t they? Hand out hankies when their shirt is getting soaked by someone else’s tears. They also whisper platitudes like “It’s gonna be all right”, even when it won’t. But perhaps, he thinks, the comfort she seeks cannot be expressed in words or tissues. She needs to make sure he really _is_ back by clutching him so tightly, by feeling his warmth and solidity. And he, if he is honest, he needs that reassurance as much as she.

She releases his coat-lapels to rest her left hand on his shoulder, while her right sneaks under his coat to hug him properly. He gradually melds into the embrace. Uncomfortable as he usually is with people touching him, this feels right. It feels safe. He can let himself relax. He hasn’t felt this safe ever since he left London.

He cannot clearly remember the last time he has been held like this. But there is one instance he does recall. It was the day Mycroft left for Harrow. Sherlock had been sulking all day, and his dark mood had cumulated in reacting badly to a friend of the family petting his hair and calling him nasty things (“cute little angel”, she had said). He’d been told off for “insulting that nice lady who simply wanted to talk to you”. The ‘nice lady’ was entirely unobservant and didn’t notice that her moron of a husband was having an affair right in front of her eyes. Sherlock was too young to understand about affairs, but it struck him as odd that the woman’s husband should pat other women’s backsides. That evening, after he’d been scolded for improper behaviour and forbidden to play in the garden and the library for some time, Mummy came to his room and held him. He might have cried a little. He thought he’d deleted it, but a faint memory of a handkerchief being handed to him lingers. So perhaps he did cry because of the unfairness of it all, of Mycroft going away, and of his ant experiment in the garden that was going to be completely ruined without him allowed to look after it. But it had been good to have Mummy around. She always was so busy, increasingly so as he grew up and grew wary of all kinds of human contact, a means of self-protection against the teasing and callousness of his peers and the mounting distance and indifference of his parents. That evening, however, he had Mummy’s full attention, and he revelled in it.

He wonders why all these memories come up now. True, in many ways Mrs. Hudson has been closer to him than his own mother. Prof. Dr. Violet Holmes likely even doesn’t know that her second born ‘died’, unless Mycroft has blabbed. She wouldn’t much care either, he reckons. She’s still wound up tightly in her work, her one great love. In a way, he understands. He’s like her in that respect and many others. Her greatest disappointment was when he decided not to pursue a scientific career and remain at university for a PhD, when he – how did she put it? _Wasted his enormous potential for some childish fantasy._ Her words had stung at the time and still leave a tast of bitterness after all these years. She never understood about the consulting detective thing, despite him believing she would. This thing about making conclusion with too little evidence, again. He didn’t consider everything he knew about her, blinded by emotion. Sherlock sees her more clearly now. He doubts she cares about his doings any longer, being so busy with her own pursuits. She’s past retirement age, but still teaches at university, and still leads research in her lab. She won’t stop until she drops dead, he knows, or until she finally gets that Nobel Prize she covets.

He hugs Mrs. Hudson tighter, mindful, however, of her light frame and her hip which must be getting aggravated by the way she’s sitting. Here’s where he belongs. This feels like home. She has changed her shampoo. This one smells of citrus and cinnamon instead of her usual rose-scented one. A Christmas gift, perhaps. He carefully, hesitantly strokes her hair. Another thing people do in situations like these, right? She seems to appreciate it. She whispers something into his shirt. He strains to hear.

“You silly, silly boy,” she murmurs. “God, how I missed you, you silly clot.”

Slowly, she disentangles herself from him and searches in the pocket of her apron for a tissue to wipe her eyes and blow her nose. Then she draws back to look at him. Carefully, she touches his cheek and runs her fingers over his cheekbone and the new lines round his eyes and down the side of his nose. He has aged more than just nine months, at least according to his looks.

The line of a frown forms between her eyebrows and she tuts disapprovingly. “Where have you been?” she asks, but he knows she doesn’t expect an answer, not now. “What have you done to yourself?”

The hand still resting under his coat rubs his side where his ribs can be felt through the thin fabric of his shirt. It tickles and he squirms slightly.  “Have you slept and eaten at all while you’ve been away? Only skin and bones left, and there wasn’t much of you to start with.”

“I could do with a decent cup of tea,” he admits, causing her to slap his shoulder playfully before the corners of her mouth quirk up in a smile.

“Is that the only reason you came back?” she returns.

He nods, smiling as well while a huge weight lifts from his heart. How long since he has last smiled? He doesn’t remember. He must have deleted smiling out of necessity and lack of opportunity.

“I couldn’t get a proper one abroad. You know how it is. And it was time. My work is almost done. It was time to come home.”

Her expression darkens. She looks both worried and angry, and strangely touched all the same. “What makes you think this is still your home?” she asks.

“Most of my things are still here – although I’d like to know what happened to my violin and the skull and my coat. You clearly haven’t seriously considered renting it to someone else otherwise there would be a sign up outside and my stuff either sold or put into storage. You might have advertised it on the internet, too, the spot being a prime location.”

Her expression has not changed. She doesn’t look impressed by his deduction. “What makes you think I’d want to have _you_ back, after all the trouble and pain you’ve caused me?”

The answer unsettles him for a moment since he seriously never considered it before. “I—,” he begins, but then notices her faint smirk.

“I was joking,” she says, and there is an amused spark in her eyes. “I’m not a vengeful person – the matter with Joe aside –, but I admit it did feel good to see you blanch there. Of course I’ll take you back, you silly lad. There are conditions, though.”

“Conditions?”

“No more fires in the kitchen and noxious fumes. No target practice in the living-room and other abuse of my wallpaper. Furniture, kitchen and bathroom appliances are going to be used according to their original purpose and for nothing else. And if you need to play the violin in the middle of the night, play some proper tune, at least. No more of the awful scratching and wailing at ungodly hours. Is that understood?”

He nods. He expected worse conditions. “Yes, Mrs. Hudson.”

“Good. Let’s go down then and I’ll make you that cuppa. And fix you something to eat, too. And then you’ll give me the full account of how and why you did this, and if I don’t like it, I’ll chuck you out and you can look for another place to stay.”

“Yes, Mrs. Hudson.”

She scrutinises his face, apparently trying to determine the sincerity behind his words. And he has been sincere, although he doesn’t really believe her threat of throwing him out again. She likes him, despite everything. One of the very few people who are actually not put off by the way he is. John used to be like this, too. But Sherlock doubts he will be as quick to accept, forgive (and embrace) him as Mrs. Hudson.

Apparently satisfied with his expression, “Give me a hand up then, dear,” she demands. “My hip’s been troubling me somewhat badly of late.”

 

**- <o>-**

 

Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen has barely changed. Even the poinsettia John gave her the Christmas before last is still alive, although most of its red bracts have been replaced by green leaves. Sherlock remembers extracting some of the latex from the plant for an experiment, and it survived even that. Hardy little thing, and well looked after. No plant has so far survived long up in 221B, but Mrs. Hudson’s orchids and succulents are in full bloom, the herbs on the windowsill are lush and green and smell faintly of wet earth and compost because they’ve just been watered.

There’s a potted auricula on the kitchen table, one of the rare kinds, dark red petals with a green rim surrounding a white interior. A gift from someone who knows how much Mrs. Hudson loves green living things, and how she mourns not having a proper garden. With a stab, Sherlock realises that only one person fits that description apart from himself. John has been here recently, then. The plant cannot have been on offer at a florist for long as most perennials aren’t sold before mid- to late spring. Ah, it would have been a gift for Mother’s Day. Commercialised crap, that day, he thinks. And Mrs. Hudson doesn’t even have kids. _Yet she always referred to us as_ her _boys._

Nevertheless, the irrational thought that he, too, should have brought some flowers today strikes him. He has never given anybody flowers. Why should he? They wilt and die. No, that’s not true. He remembers fetching grandma some for her birthday once when he was about nine years old. He plucked them in the forest during a visit to their house in the country, having read up on poisonous flora beforehand and wanting to put his newfound, fascinating knowledge into practice. He found plenty, the month being June: foxglove and hemlock, arum, some late lily of the valley, and even a deadly nightshade with berries almost ripe and shining darkly. Grandma was delighted, but told him to wash his hands very thoroughly after handing over his bouquet.

No poisonous plants for Mrs. Hudson, though, but a herb or two she’s lacking at the moment, this sounds like a good plan. A pot of coriander, perhaps, or a rare kind of thyme or basil? She would love that. Sherlock shakes his head as he stands somewhat awkwardly at the table, staring at the auricula and thinking about plants. God, he’s really getting all barmy, isn’t he? Still, he should really get her the herbs. He’ll do so tomorrow. 

“Sit down before you fall down, young man,” says Mrs. Hudson while she refills the kettle and switches it on. Her tone is friendly but stern. Sherlock complies and lowers himself to one of the wooden chairs.

“Take off your coat, you’ll be too warm otherwise,” she says as she fetches two cups and the metal box she keeps the tea bags in. Still PG Tips. Sherlock can smell them. Not the most distinguished tea by far, but the only one that feels right to him. They always had PG Tips up in 221B, unless John fancied something lighter and would brew some Darjeeling.

Mrs. Hudson glances at him over her shoulder. “You are staying, aren’t you? Not dashing off again in a moment?”

“I’m staying,” confirms Sherlock as he drapes the coat over another chair and sets his bag there, too. _If I may_ , he adds in thought. She gives him a long glance and a very minute nod. She knows about his apprehension, he is sure. She knows how to read him, even when he is trying to disguise his true thoughts and feelings.

“There’s some chicken curry left, but no rice. I’ll make you some toast to go with it.”

“Thank you.”

Even if he wasn’t hungry, he knows he’d have to eat. But he is, ravenously. His stomach growls at the mention of food. Mrs. Hudson must have heard, because she smiles ever so slightly as she opens the fridge for a tupper box of curry. He knows she is enjoying this, looking after him. She needs to take care of people, just like John does. Before, Sherlock rarely let her, not openly, at least, although secretly he appreciated her concern for him and her home-cooked meals and tea when John wasn’t around to feed him.

Soon there is curry warming up on the cooker and Mrs. Hudson is buttering toast. The tea is ready, too. Just milk, the way he likes it. Strange, he thinks, that he drinks his coffee black with a considerable amount of sugar, but his tea without sugar but with milk. Odd habit, irrational. Where did it come from? He can’t say. But she remembers.

He smiles slightly as he takes a careful sip from the hot brew, feeling a sting when it touches his injured tongue. Strange what people waste brain-space on. But then he remembers the creaky steps and the smell of John’s jumpers and the exact way the doctor smiles when Sherlock’s said something witty and brilliant. And there is some comfort in knowing that out there is a person who deems it worthy to store how much milk you take in your tea. He can’t recall experiencing this before he moved into 221B with John.

He must have sighed or made some other kind of sound, because Mrs. Hudson turns to him from where she has been stirring the curry. She looks at him questioningly. He has been lost in thought, otherwise he might have noticed the awkward silence that has taken over the kitchen. She has questions, plenty of them, but she doesn’t seem to know how to address them. Instead she is distracting herself with fixing him a meal, trying to find comfort and reassurance in mundane tasks. He knows his appearance today has severely shaken her, and as much as she is glad about him being alive and in one piece, she is also disappointed, bitter and sad about the pain he has caused her and others dear to her, both by his presumed death and his obvious betrayal of her trust.

And he, emotionally laden conversation never having been his strong suit, he’d be damned if he’ll make the first step. What should he tell her, anyway? That he’s been both on the hunt and the run these past nine months? That he’s killed people and doesn’t regret it? That he survived capture, torture, a failed attempt at seduction (okay, the seduction wasn’t a failure, on the contrary, his reaction and inability to go through with it was), illness, heartbreak? That he’s been alone – and painfully lonely – ever since he left London not long after his ‘death’, that he hated every moment of it? Is that what she wants to know, the truth? Or would she prefer some heroic tale about his great sacrifice? It wasn’t ‘great’. Necessary, yes, or at least that’s what he’s kept telling himself. But there was nothing glorious or heroic about it.

A bowl of steaming curry is placed in front of him, together with a spoon and a plate with toast.

“Eat,” Mrs. Hudson says, taking a seat opposite him and stirring sugar into her tea. He doesn’t hesitate and grabs the spoon. At least when he has his mouth full she can’t expect him to talk. Bad manners, isn’t it? And the food is good, despite chewing proving difficult at first with his damaged jaw. A fierce blow indeed. A wonder she didn’t break her hand.

Ah, food. He’s deleted when he’s last had a warm meal. Usually he grabbed something quick on the way, not caring what he ate as long as it kept him going. But this is excellent. Just the right spiciness, the meat not overcooked, the butter having soaked the warm toast. Is this why people usually pay so much attention to food? He enjoys and appreciates a good meal when he gets it, but usually he’s too busy or to distracted to care. Now the food itself serves as a distraction, a welcome one, from what lies ahead.

When he looks up from his bowl for a moment, he catches Mrs. Hudson watching him with a slight frown. She’s worried, he knows. Does he really look that starved and needy? Can she read hints of his dark doings in the way he devoures the curry and tears at the toast? She’s shrewd, and she knows him like few others.

“There’s more if you like,” she says kindly, and he nods. He’ll need more. The bowl’s almost empty, and he’s only beginning to feel how hungry he really is. “I was to keep some for John as he said he’d come over with some stuff from the pharmacy, but you look like you need it more.”

For an instant, Sherlock’s hand freezes over his bowl. He’s sure she noticed. She must have. Hasn’t she mentioned John to get some kind of reaction out of him? Oh yes, shrewd indeed, and cunning. And a tiny bit vengeful, too, good old Mrs. Hudson is, despite her claiming otherwise. He decides to let her have her moment. Moreover he’s curious. There is so much he doesn’t know about what John has been up to ever since he moved out. He has only very limited knowledge about the new John, the post-Sherlock John. It’s vain to label him thus, Sherlock knows, but he has no problem with being classified as vain. John _was_ different with him. He’s bound to be altered now without him, the same way Sherlock has been different with and without John.

He lowers his spoon and sits up straighter, glancing at his former landlady over the auricula. She wants him to ask, doesn’t she? Despite the pain it will cause them both, he has to ask. And so he does.

“How is he?”

Her eyes narrow and her mouth forms a thin line. Wrong question? Is she getting angry again? Sad? Is she entitled to that? Will Sherlock be yelled at now? Mrs. Hudson isn’t exactly the yelling type, but she can get pretty loud and pretty tough when she or people dear to her have been wronged. And in the end, a verbal lashing might hurt more than the blow she’s dealt him.

She’s about to speak up when there’s a sound, causing both to perk up their heads. Front door. Someone’s coming. There’s a knock, no, two, three. A signal. But Mrs. Hudson doesn’t relax, even though she must have recognised it. The sound of a key in the lock. Sherlock feels himself grow cold, his heart beating frantically in his chest. The curry in his stomach lies there like a bar of lead. No, not lead. Something heavier and more deadly. Uranium? Plutonium! Yes, that feels about right.

He’s not ready for the impending encounter. Not now. It could just be Mrs. Turner coming over for a cuppa and a chat, but he knows it’s not her. He recognises the tread. A faint hint of a limp, otherwise steady and firm. No cane. The rustle of a plastic bag. Oh, stupid, stupid. He should have paid more attention to Mrs. Hudson’s words. Didn’t she say she expected him to call? Sherlock knows who’s just arrived. So does Mrs. Hudson. With a stern but otherwise unreadable expression, she confirms his fears when she says,

“You should ask him yourself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are two drawings for this chapter, both from my "[Sherlock after the Fall](http://khorazir.tumblr.com/tagged/after-the-fall)"-series: "[Receiving](http://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/44486766419/sherlock-after-the-fall-receiving-this-is-a)" and "[Comforting](http://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/45028348581/sherlock-after-the-fall-comforting-38th-in-my)"


	3. Chapter 3

There’s still time to bolt, Sherlock knows. The backdoor leading into the courtyard that Mrs. Hudson so fervently wishes was a garden is right behind his chair. Leap up, tear it open, get out and run, run, run. Coat and bag be damned, he doesn’t need them. He just needs to get away.

“Sorry for being so late, Mrs. Hudson, there was another emergency at the clinic.”

Sherlock freezes in his chair when he hears the voice. The voice he has missed for so long, missed with an intensity he never thought he’d feel in regard to another person. Twice after his ‘death’, both times in a moment of utter exhaustion and desperation he even called John’s phone just to hear the voice, listening to the voicemail and hanging up as soon as the beep sounded, knowing that John wouldn’t be able to call back because Sherlock’s number was blocked.

 _Let me through. He’s my friend. He’s my friend._ John’s desperate plea rings in his ear. That and a weak, heartbreaking ‘Jesus, no’ and ‘God, no’ were the last things he heard him say. _He’s my friend._ Sherlock still wonders how he managed to keep it together, lying on the wet paving stones in front of Bart’s in a puddle of his own blood previously given, how he managed not to blink and spoil all careful preparation in that moment. The plan had been good, it worked despite the lack of time for proper preparations. Only he hadn’t taken into consideration how much collateral damage it would cause. _He’s my friend._

Mrs. Hudson has risen from her chair and turns to the door leading into the hall. Sherlock can’t move. It’s too late for flight now. And he wants to see. He needs to. He sits very still, his hands on the table in front of him, his back straight, his gaze fixed upon the door. A silhouette, the rustle of the bag loud in the sudden quiet, then the door opens and there is John.

“Oh, I didn’t know you had a visi—”

Silence falls like a clap of thunder, all movement is frozen but the lightning-fast sweep of Sherlock’s eyes over John, taking in every minute detail he thought he had forgotten, every small alteration, every line and strand of hair. _Familiar black Haversack jacket, moist from fine drizzle, collar still turned up (so rain has started again). New jumper, dark grey, unpatterned, contains high amount of cashmere fibres (expensive, far more so than John’s usual jumpers, gift, from whom? Sister? Has maintained contact, she has a new, well-paying job. Or gift from new girlfriend? Expensive garment equals serious relationship? Hopefully not, would make things increasingly awkward and difficult). Checkered shirt (old), jeans, brown brogues, all familiar. Has lost weight, though, and started working out regularly again (running, judging from leg-musculature, present slight limp not due to PSTD but a minor injury, ligature torn while running in winter, has almost recovered by now). Long day at work and several nights of interrupted sleep, night shift or nightmares? Difficult to ascertain at the distance, left in a hurry this morning (overslept?) and didn’t shave properly, has switched from electric to blade a while ago and nicked himself on his chin. Has been to the barber recently, hair military short as on the day we met, new lines around his eyes and darker shadows (lack of sleep, stress at work or in his relationship? Worry about sister? Unlikely, she seems to be doing okay for a change. Grief? Still?), skin pale, hasn’t been out much, seems to run mostly in the evenings, long hours at the clinic, uses work as distraction and new purpose (distraction from what? Grief again?). Nose slightly reddened, has been blowing it frequently, minor cold, went to work regardless …_

The list goes on an on. Sherlock feels almost overwhelmed by the myriad information crashing down on him. All his methods of channelling it, of picking out the most valid data seem not to function. Everything is important because everything is John. John, John, John. Like a camel drinking water after a long trek through the desert Sherlock soaks up the data. Only at second glance he pays attention to John’s expression and immediately scolds himself for his screwed priorities.

John stands frozen in shock, his eyes raking Sherlock’s figure, his expression unreadable even for Sherlock who knows him so well, can usually tell by the faintest shift in expression what’s on John’s mind and yet finds himself repeatedly, miraculously surprised by this unfathomable, eternally interesting and fascinating creature.

Then there is a shaky intake of breath from Mrs. Hudson, a sigh, almost a sob. It breaks the eerie quiet of the kitchen. Time moves again. From the corner of his eye Sherlock notices her sway and clutch the counter behind her for support, just a shift in the floral pattern that is positioned at the edge of his vision. But his focus is on John who now, brought on by the reminder of the former landlady’s presence, stirs slightly.

What is he going to do? Sherlock does not know, and the uncertainty causes his stomach to clench, his throat to constrict. He couldn’t speak if he wanted to, even breathing suddenly gains new interest because it seems impossible with a chest so squashed by … what? Sentiment again? He is drowning in feelings, and he doesn’t know how to dam them in. Doesn’t want to, what’s more. He can’t even name and distinguish them properly, all jumbled up and confused as they are. He was never good at labelling emotions, neither his own nor other people’s. But now they’re one huge maelstrom of relief, joy, worry, regret, pride, anger, self-loathing, self-confidence. Love? Is that the proper label? How would he know, having never felt it before, or if he did, he didn’t recognise it for what it was. But he is certain he has never felt like this. He wants to leap up and grab John and enfold him in a crushing hug, while at the same time he wants to run as fast as he can. That doesn’t make sense. Completely irrational. Sherlock is entirely out of his depth. He hates it, this feeling of utter loss of control, of the situation and himself. He’s always avoided being compromised like this, for good reason it now shows, although he almost wishes for a precedent, just to provide him with guidance what to do, how to react. He’s lost at sea, there is no life-raft in sight and a storm is brewing. _Say something, do something_ , he silently implores John. _Don’t just stand there. I need input, I need a reaction, an action, anything. I can’t work with this. I can’t make the first step. I don’t know how._

After what seems like an age of the world, John, brilliant, faithful John, obliges. His frozen stance relaxes ever so slightly and he lets out a breath, his shoulders sagging fractionally. It seems to Sherlock like John has been keeping in this particular draught of air ever since his Fall. John closes his eyes, draws another deep breath and releases it slowly, and opens them again. He looks … Sherlock can’t be certain. The light isn’t very good, and he’s not sure his brain is working properly with all these feelings battling inside him – chemically it’s only a cocktail of hormones in his bloodstream, he knows that, but biochemistry, simple scientific fact doesn’t seem appropriate or even applicable for the confusion raging inside him.

One thing seems to be fact, though. John looks utterly, utterly relieved. He looks like a man crawling out from underneath a rock that has been crushing him. Grateful, too, as if one of his dearest wishes has been granted. There is no anger, no rage (not yet), just pure relief. This makes Sherlock hopeful that this, their reunion, won’t turn out to be as painful and dire as he feared.

John appears to have overcome his immediate surprise and shock. There is still wariness written all over his stance as if he doesn’t quite trust his eyes. But obviously he is reassured by the fact that Mrs. Hudson can see Sherlock, too, and that she has even fed him. Ghosts don’t eat curry or drink tea.

John’s expression has slightly shifted into a thoughtful one. A frown is beginning to show as a deep trench between his eyebrows. Is this the first sign of the storm that must be brewing inside him? Will there be thunder and lightning soon? Sherlock isn’t sure. It doesn’t quite look like the John who deals out blows. That John is deadly quiet. But even though present John is calm and controlled, too, at least outwardly, Sherlock can see that his brain is working at great speed. And John’s brain can be quite fast. Never as fast as Sherlock’s, of course, but very few are. Much faster than the average sluggish thinking machine, though, John’s brain is. What is it computing now, Sherlock wonders. John has studied him the same way Sherlock has taken in every small change about his friend and is now making comparisons with the Sherlock prior to death. But it’s impossible to tell what he’s making of it, what he deduces from the changes. Can he see what Sherlock has been up to, how dark and difficult these nine months have been for him the way Sherlock can read his residual grief in his tired features and lost weight and the new lines on his face? Is he going to care, if he notices? Or will he think that the hardship Sherlock endured was both freely chosen and well deserved in light of a friend’s betrayal?

Neither of this seems to fit the image John casts right now. _Think_ , Sherlock tells himself. _Pay attention, observe, and bloody think_. _He’s studied you, but he’s not really looking at you right now. His eyes are slightly unfocused. If at all, he’s gazing inwardly. Remembering. Oh. Oh. He’s sifting through past information. He’s going through the events at Bart’s. It hurts, bringing up all those memories. His mouth is a thin line and his jaw clenches ever so slightly. He’s gripping the handle of the Boots plastic bag more tightly. Why is he doing that now? Why dwell on painful memories when I’m right here, alive and present? He looked relieved earlier. Shouldn’t he be so still, even happy if it’s true and he has been mourning and missing me all this time? This behaviour doesn’t make sense._

Then it strikes him, and the realisation touches him in a way he didn’t anticipate. Oh John! Sherlock’s never given him enough credit. But John has learned from him, has picked up a great number of things during the time of their cohabitation and association. His skills at observation and deduction have been honed. He’s been an attentive pupil, John Watson. Sherlock feels pride bloom in him at the realisation that John has truly taken his methods to heart and what’s more, applied them.

John never lost faith in his friend, even when Sherlock himself and the rest of the world tried to convince him otherwise, even when most of the evidence pointed in that direction. But only part of the evidence. John, clever John, has been more observant than everybody else, has picked up the clues that none of the others did. The flaws in the plan borne out of haste and the need to get everything set up in time for the big leap – John has seen them. Sherlock is convinced that John must have had doubts, vague, inexplicable doubts about his demise for some time. His stance and prior display of relief indicate this. He looked like a man who for an extended period of time has been at odds with what his rational mind and his subconscious (and, Sherlock dares not name it, his heart), have been telling him. John has seen and felt and read evidence of his best friend’s death, has felt the absence of a pulse in his wrist, has seen the dark blood spilled on the pavement, has calculated the odds of someone surviving a fall from this height. He has read the coroner’s report, has attended the funeral. Has even received Sherlock’s will if Mycroft played his part which Sherlock doesn’t doubt. John’s mind must have been convinced that Sherlock was dead. And yet, and yet, there might have been doubt growing over time, nurtured by details and tiny snatches of information he picked up subconsciously and yet stored away. He never lost faith in his friend, and it seems he never quite lost hope in a miracle. His relief is that of a man who’s been nagged by a hope he couldn’t explain, not even to himself, but which now he finds confirmed. Sherlock knows it well, the feeling of the existence of a larger pattern which resides just on the edge of rational thought, glimpsed now and again yet still too insubstantial for him to grasp its threats.

For John, this pattern has become clear today. If ever during the past nine months he thought he had lost his mind, was clinging to false hope, had read the signs incorrectly, seeing Sherlock today caused the pattern to stand out bright and clear. Sherlock wonders what it was that gave him away. Luckily, nobody else seems to have remarked upon the inconsistencies like the precise amount of blood spilled and the fact it was not fresh, the strange hospital laundry van that disappeared just when John arrived, the quick disposal of the body. But then John has always been a cut above the rest of humanity, and certainly above the morons Moriarty sent to keep Sherlock’s friends in their sights.

 

**- <o>-**

 

There’s another strangled sound from Mrs. Hudson that finally breaks the spell. Sherlock has entirely lost track of time but realises that only moment can have passed. No words have been spoken, but upon the sound, a mix between a sob and a squee half muffled by the hand pressed to her mouth, both men stir out of their statuesque stance to turn towards her.

Sherlock realises that explanations of how John figured out his scheme will have to wait. John’s frown turns into an expression of concern as he studies Mrs. Hudson.

“Jesus, what happened to your hand?” he asks, his voice rough. Ah, so apparently he hasn’t noticed the bruise on Sherlock’s jaw, not quite understandable as this part of Sherlock’s face has been turned toward the lamp and stands out brightly. But apparently John’s study of him has been rather selective.

With a few quick paces, John moves over to their former landlady and reaches out to gingerly take her hand in his. Sherlock feels a stab of guilt. He’s completely neglected to enquire after her injury and tend to it.

John has completely switched into doctor-mode, and Sherlock thinks he can understand the appeal. It’s familiar to John and therefore comforting. He can do as he does best: care for, look after and help people. John needs to help. It’s like breathing to him. He’s always cared so much, and wore his care openly, unlike Sherlock who despite his brother’s warnings also cares but secretly, privately, unless it makes him jump from roofs. Right now caring for Mrs. Hudson buys John time to consider what to do next, how to deal with Sherlock. Training takes over and holds shock and warring emotions at bay. Outwardly, John is surprisingly, unexpectedly, even shockingly calm, but Sherlock is convinced it won’t last. The explosion will come.

“I thought he was a burglar,” says Mrs. Hudson tremulously, supporting herself against the counter and partly against John.

John doesn’t spare Sherlock a glance as carefully he examines her hand. He just nods. Sherlock wonders what kind of scenario he is imagining now. Does he suspect Mrs. Hudson only employed her formidable (and fucking painful) right hook _after_ she recognised the ‘burglar’? It’s likely he does. Maybe he’s glad she hit Sherlock, thinks he deserved it. Maybe Sherlock did.

“It doesn’t seem to be broken, but you should have it x-rayed tomorrow to be sure. It’s badly bruised, though. You should have cooled it immediately instead of operating the cooker and stirring food. We’ll need an icepack and some antiseptic for the abrasions. Also, do you still have of the voltarol gel I prescribed you a while ago for your hip? It’ll help with the swelling and provide some pain relief.”

She nods. John’s head twitches ever so slightly in Sherlock’s direction and Sherlock knows immediately what’s required of him and oh, is he grateful for the task. Normally it’s been John to do the fetch and carry, but now Sherlock almost scrambles to find a reprieve from the unbearable tension that’s been reigning the kitchen. He needs to withdraw, if only for a moment, rally his thoughts and severely sort out and clamp down on his emotions. He needs to function. He can’t afford to make any mistake because the stakes are too high. He can’t lose John again, or if he’s already lost him, he must win him back. There is no alternative.

 

**- <o>-**

 

There is a coolpack in the small freezing unit under Mrs. Hudson’s fridge in the kitchen. Sherlock knows this because he used to … borrow it on occasion. He quickly retrieves it (lies on top of the frozen vegetables and fish, must have seen use lately, ah, John may have treated his injured ankle here, closest location to Regent’s Park after all), wraps it in a dish cloth and hands it to John. He keeps his eyes down, not trusting his jumbled emotions should his gaze meet that of John’s up close. Their fingers do not brush, and for the moment Sherlock considers this all to the best.

Gently, John steers Mrs. Hudson to the table and sits her down. He doesn’t look at Sherlock, either, distracting himself with his charge. But then, “First aid kit, Sherlock,” he says, calmly but firmly.

Sherlock feels a hot rush run through him at the mention of his name in that voice. He hasn’t heard his name spoken for so long. At times he thought he’d deleted it. But John hasn’t. And Sherlock feels that only now that he’s been called by his proper, his true name, he comes alive again. He _has_ been dead these nine months. But now he’s been resurrected. He draws a breath he hopes John won’t notice and flees the room in search of the required items.

 

**- <o>-**

 

The first thing Sherlock does when he reaches Mrs. Hudson's bathroom is relieve himself. He has needed a toilet ever since he stepped into the house, but good as he is at shutting out his body's needs this particular one was superseded by the reunion with his landlady. But now he really has to pee, because a much tougher confrontation still lies ahead and he can't be distracted by a full bladder when he tries to make amends with John.

As Sherlock leaves Mrs. Hudson bathroom with the first aid kit and the voltarol after a brief search of various drawers and cabinets, he passes by her bedroom again. The door is half ajar, and even though the room is dark, he catches a glimpse of something peculiar on the dressing table opposite the bed. Curiosity aroused, he enters the room – and is greeted by an old friend.

The skull grins at him out of the gloom, looking out of place on top of a stack of National Trust magazines that sits next to two Agatha Christie novels, a Sudoku book and Mrs. Hudson’s beloved collection of 1950s Schildkröt dolls whose round, painted celluloid faces Sherlock has always found to look much scarier than the skull.

Reverently, he steps over to Billy and runs a hand over the smooth bone, following the sutures of the neurocranium. What is it doing here, he wonders. Mrs. Hudson always complained about ‘that horrible thing’ and its prominent place on the mantelpiece, and yet here it sits, right in her very bedroom next to her dolls, grinning at her and staring at her with empty eye-sockets every single night. Sentiment again? Is anything not inspired by sentiment tonight? Did she keep it as a reminder of its previous owner? _Memento mori_. Something stings in his chest. She must have missed him tremendously. Sherlock never expected anybody to do so.

From the corner of his eye he catches a reflection on the wall. Turning, he searches for the source of the bright spot on the flowery wallpaper. Catching the light from the corridor outside the half open door, a framed picture sits partly hidden by another of these unbearably dull crime novels on her bedside table. Sherlock walks round the bed to have a closer look at it, expecting to find a photograph of Mrs. Hudson’s niece and her small child.

But when he has drawn close enough to see the image, his heart clenches yet again. The photograph shows Mrs. Hudson’s ‘boys’. Sherlock cannot recall when it was taken, and the picture clearly indicates why. It’s a dark, grainy shot of the couch in the living-room upstairs. The round lamp and the television cast a dim light on the two figures half sitting, half lying on the sofa, one propped up against the other. There’s John, head resting back against the cushions, features and body relaxed and eyes closed. And Sherlock slouching next to him, his shaggy head on John’s shoulder, likewise asleep.

When did this happen? Sherlock searches his memories. It must have been after the successful conclusion of a case. There are takeaway boxed on the table, but neither man has changed out of his day clothes into something more comfortable. To his consternation Sherlock finds he has no recollection of the event, neither of falling asleep on John’s shoulder nor of waking up in this position. He thinks he does recall the case, though, a tough, nasty one involving the murder of a child. He spent two weeks virtually without rest trying to find the culprit. John, as ever, had been an invaluable help. No wonder both had virtually collapsed after their meal in front of the telly.

Wistfully, he runs his fingers over the glass. _Mrs. Hudson’s boys_ , he thinks. _We used to be that_. He gazes at the utensils in his hand. Time to return to the kitchen and try and salvage what may be salvaged of the past.

 

**- <o>-**

 

Both John and Mrs. Hudson look up when Sherlock reappears in the kitchen. Again he finds himself pinned by John’s dark blue gaze, sharp and stern. _He thought I’d disappear again_ , he thinks. He hands over what he has fetched, feeling Mrs. Hudson’s eyes on him. They have been talking about him, he is sure. But what can they have said? He has no idea. At least John has divested himself of his jacket. He's going to stay, then, perhaps listen. If only Sherlock knew what to say. A simple apology doesn't seem to cut it, and deep down Sherlock is opposed to the idea of apologising. He did what he had to in order to save John's life. He's not sorry for that and would do it again if required. But he has an inkling that communicating these thoughts wouldn't go down too well.

To occupy himself with some task lest he lose his mind because in all this dreadful uncertainty, he refills the kettle and switches it on, and fetches his and Mrs. Hudson’s cup from the table as well as a new one from the cupboard. Teabags, milk from the fridge. Sugar for Mrs. Hudson. John never used to take any. Sherlock hopes this hasn’t changed. He needs something unchanged and stable right now.

There is a faint hiss of pain from Mrs. Hudson when John carefully removes the coolpack and begins to apply the voltarol. Sherlock flinches ever so slightly at the sound. He should have taken care of this. John is talking to Mrs. Hudson in a low voice, instructing her how to look after the injury. Sherlock realises that apart from one command, John has not talked to him yet.

“You’re blocking out the light.”

Ah, another direct address. Can this be considered progress? Or simply the acknowledgement of the fact that Sherlock has been hovering uncertainly next to the table like a dog that’s been forgotten by its owner. Luckily in that moment the kettle switches itself off, and Sherlock moves over to pour water in the three cups and goes through the procedure of making tea. He never bothered when they were still living upstairs. There were always people about who’d make it for him. But now he feels he needs to do this, mundane and boring as it is. Part of his penance? Ah, no, they won’t let him off the hook so easily, neither of them.

John has nearly finished bandaging Mrs. Hudson’s hand. “Come over to the clinic tomorrow,” he tells her, “and I’ll do an x-ray, just to make sure there’s no fracture.” She nods and reaches out with her undamaged hand to grab his and squeezes it briefly. Then she half turns to Sherlock.

“There’s biscuits in the tin,” she tells him. “Custard creams and the digestives you always liked.”

He nods, removes the tea-bags (John’s last because he likes his tea strong – yet another little fact clogging up Sherlock's hard drive and yet impossible to delete), then opens the cupboard to fetch the tin, placing first it then the cups on the table. When he sets John’s in front of him, the doctor looks up.

“I used to doubt you could actually make tea,” he says. “Is this drinkable?”

Sherlock cannot help snorting derisively. “It’s not advanced chemistry, making tea,” he states with a trace of his usual arrogance. A strange expression appears briefly on John’s face, like he is fighting down a smile. He reaches for his cup, hesitates (which Sherlock recognises as mild theatrics) and takes a sip. Apparently the brew is satisfactory. Sherlock thinks he feels relieved and immediately scolds himself for it. It’s just bloody tea. He really ought to get a grip on himself. This is embarrassing.

“How’s your jaw?” John’s voice startles him.

“Twinges a bit,” Sherlock replies truthfully.

“I hit him quite hard, I think,” adds Mrs. Hudson, looking worried of a sudden. “He even went down. I didn’t mean to, but there you go.”

John looks up again at Sherlock, frowns slightly, then rises, steps back and indicates his chair. “Sit down.”

Sherlock hesitates, then sits. He's nervous, he realises. Why? John has looked after his injuries plenty of times. Why does this feel so massive, so important? So bloody awkward? He should be glad that John cares enough still to want to ease his pains. Or is it the expectation of touch which unsettles him so much, although not in the way strangers' touches normally do. John is not a stranger. In fact, everything about him despite nine months of enstrangement is so terribly, beautifully familiar that it makes Sherlock's chest ache. He draws a steadying breath and waits, hoping that John won't notice his jittery nerves.

John opens the first aid kit again, rummages a bit and retrieves an antiseptic wipe. “Turn your face to the light,” John instructs.

Sherlock obeys – and has to stifle a gasp because suddenly John is oh so close. Sherlock can almost feel his breath on his face. And then there is touch. First only the wipe, cool on his skin. He tenses and draws a sharp breath when the antiseptic touches his abraded skin. It stings.

But then, then John’s other hand comes to rest against his right cheek to turn his head a little farther and tilt it upwards. Sherlock swallows hard, cursing himself for doing so because John must notice. The touch is feather-light, and yet feels like fire on his skin. It takes all his self-control not to lean into it, not to rub his head against John’s hand like a cat that wants petting. He’s trembling slightly, he cannot help it. His body is betraying him, like it did back on Dartmoor when irrational fear overwhelmed his rational mind. Here, too, he feels overwhelmed. But by what? He cannot place or define it. It’s new, and scary, and can’t be entirely explained away by citing his exhaustion and emotional stress at the reunion. He only knows that for someone who usually loathes to be touched, who tries to avoid unwelcome contact at all costs, who never ever seeks out physical intimacy for its own sake and does not appreciate when he has to for a case – well, for such a person he is enjoying this far too much.

And he _is_ enjoying it. He can read the signs, the treacherous signs his own body is displaying as well as he can read anybody else’s. His heartbeat is elevated. In fact his heart seems to be racing in his chest. Impossible for John not to notice. He must be able to see Sherlock’s pulse pounding in his carotid artery, and feel it, too, where his hand still rests against Sherlock’s jaw. Sherlock closes his eyes to hide his undoubtedly dilated pupils. This is not good. He cannot think straight anymore. The only thought filling his mind is John.

John’s scent, the warmth of his hand and its feel, the fingers slightly rough and calloused. It’s steady, the hand. No intermittent tremor, but then that never occurs when John is under stress or excited. Is this how normal people feel every time they are attracted to someone? It's horrible. How do they cope? How do they manage to get anything done at all? Sherlock feels like his brain, this brilliantly organised, rational machine is abandoning him. Severe malfunction. How wise of him to have stayed clear of this kind of emotional entanglement so far. He should distance himself, he knows. He shouldn't be enjoying it. It will only compromise his mental abilities further if he does and that won't do. Caring won't do. Loving won't do, particularly when there is little chance of it ever being returned. Pining, bloody pining won't do at all. He's done enough of that while he was away. Stop it, he tells himself. Stop it now! You'll get hurt when you let yourself get carried away by this.

But he doesn't really listen because John's thumb brushes ever so gently along the underside of his chin and Sherlock swallows again, opening his eyes a fraction to take in John's expression. He still seems to concentrate entirely on Sherlock's injury, frowning slightly, his eyes intent. Doctor-mode. And yet Sherlock notices the size of his pupils, the increased warmth of his hand, the tongue that makes a brief appearance to wet John's lips like it always does when he's nervous. And he's been dabbing at the bruise for far longer than he strictly needs to in order to treat it.

Just as Sherlock arrives at this realisation, John does so, too. He drops the hand with the wipe and withdraws the other with another unconscious (?) brush along Sherlock's jaw.

“Well, there doesn't seem to be lasting damage,” John declares as he draws back and then turns to dispose of the wipe and to wash his hands. “Will bruise nicely, though. Be glad Mrs. Hudson hit you,” he adds when he turns to Sherlock again. “Because if I had seen you first I'd have broken your nose.”

Standing uncertain for a moment, John then draws up another chair and sits down across the table from Sherlock. He opens the tin and gets himself a custard cream which he eats slowly, sipping his tea. Both Sherlock and Mrs. Hudson watch him expectantly. He's the one who has to decree how to proceed.

“It was the headstone, you know,” he says suddenly, startling Sherlock yet again.

“The headstone?” he asks, genuinely confused which doesn't happen often. 

John nods. “They put it up too early. When my father died, there was a wooden cross on his grave for months to allow the earth over the coffin to settle. But on your grave, they put up the headstone only a few weeks after the funeral. Would have made sense had your body been cremated, but it hadn’t been. I wondered about it, once I was able to think clearly again. About it and other things that didn't quite add up.”

Sherlock inclines his head. Oh, clever John indeed. “I didn't have enough time to organise every detail,” he admits. “I was lucky for things to work at all. There was so much at stake and a high chance that my death wasn't going to be pretense but real.”

John's eyes narrow at this. Sherlock doesn't know what to make of his expression.

“And yet you would have done it?” John asks. “Jumped, I mean.”

Sherlock looks at him gravely. “Yes.”

John holds his gaze for a moment before reaching for his cup again. Sherlock expects him to ask why, but John seems lost in thought. He drinks absently and fetches himself another biscuit. Sherlock grows fidgety and apprehensive again. Can't they just go on? Even though he doesn't exactly look forward to it, he is willing to explain and face the consequences. If only they can just get a move on to relieve the unbearable tension.

Thankfully, John obliges eventually. After what seems a small eternity, he sets down his cup and runs his hand over his mouth to brush away the crumps. Sitting up straighter in his chair, he lifts his chin in an almost challenging fashion, facing Sherlock steadily across the auricula on the table. His voice is firm and calm when he demands,

“Explain.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artwork again: ["Sherlock after the Fall: Anticipating"](http://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/45415904409/sherlock-after-the-fall-anticipating-39th-in) and ["Sherlock after the Fall: Healing"](http://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/45786743358/sherlock-after-the-fall-healing-40th-in-my)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be the last chapter, but it got so long I decided to divide it. Thanks to all who left kudos and comments. Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

_Explain._ Easier said than done. Sherlock holds John’s gaze for as long as he can. Interesting that he should be the first to avert his eyes. Usually he can outstare anybody. But then John isn’t anybody, is he? He’s not had time to think this through, Sherlock realises. He was convinced he’d not meet John today, that he’d have time to familiarise himself with his old abode again, with London, that he’d have time to settle – his body and his mind. This is too soon. He is exhausted. His thoughts and feelings are all over the place. What to say now? How to explain? He can relate the facts, his reasons for setting up his Fall. He can justify all his moves, but something tells him that it would not be prudent to tell John the unadulterated truth. Some … elaboration might be required. Some omission, too. How do normal people do this? Explanation? Confession? Is there a code for it, a recipe?

Once more Sherlock finds himself at sea without land in sight. This, the peaceful resolution of this convoluted mess, it’s so desperately important. Because if he doesn’t get it right … inconceivable. No, that’s not true. It is _very_ conceivable. In fact, if he messes this up the outcome is very easy and very painful to envision.

He takes a small sip of his tea. Puts down the cup. Draws a breath. There’s a frown forming between John’s brows. He’s getting impatient. Angry, even. Angrier. He must think Sherlock is stalling. And Sherlock is, but it’s not because of some crafty ulterior motive. Plain apprehension, worse – let’s name it properly – fear is keeping him from speaking up. Sherlock doesn’t like the state he is in. He’s good with words, can talk his way out of nearly every tight spot. Usually. Now he can only hope that the right words will come to him as he stumbles along.

“Do you remember,” he begins eventually, and it feels like every syllable needs to be carved from rock in order to form, a laborious, painful process, “back at the Pool. Do you remember Moriarty’s words?”

John seems confused for an instant, not knowing how this information relates to what he obviously expected to hear. “He said a lot of stuff, and I didn’t pay attention to all of it, concerned as I was about the Semtex he’d piled on me.” _And about you_ , his eyes seem to add.

“He said he wanted to burn me,” says Sherlock. “‘I’ll burn the heart out of you’, those were his exact words.”

John cocks his head slightly. “Yeah, I remember that. It would have sounded crazy but for the creepy intonation. You replied you didn’t have a heart. I wasn’t at the time, but right now I’m much inclined to believe you.”

That hurts, as obviously it’s supposed to. Sherlock rests both his hands against the warm cup to occupy them.

“What did he mean?” asks John.

Sherlock looks up. “I didn’t really pay attention to it at the time. An empty threat, I thought. I made the mistake of not taking him seriously enough.” He squares his shoulders, sitting up straighter. “What he meant I only understood later: He wanted to destroy me. So far, so obvious. You know that, too. We talked about it, remember? But he didn’t just want to get rid of me because I had become an inconvenience to his business. No, he wanted to vanquish me entirely. Humiliate me publicly, tarnish my reputation, estrange me from the few people who endured me or even could be called my friends. Why? Well, he wanted to determine who was cleverer, the ultimate mastermind. Also, he wanted to be entertained. He wanted not to be bored. I could sympathise with him there. The ‘Final Problem’, he called it. You recall he came to Baker Street, shortly after his trial? We had tea, from these very cups even – sorry I borrowed them without notifying you, Mrs. Hudson,” he adds apologetically. “He arrived on rather short notice. I did return them immediately, though, and even washed them.”

Mrs. Hudson tuts, apparently more irritated about her precious china absconding without her knowledge than it being used to serve tea to a master criminal in style.

John scowls. “Yes, I recall you mentioning he came here?” he states, and Sherlock can tell he’s truly getting angry by the forced calmness of his speech. “I recall that in an afterthought, while we were handcuffed together and on the run from the bloody police and a bunch of trained assassins you let drop he called and you had a little chat. Didn’t see the need to inform me earlier about it, did you?”

“It would only have confused things,” says Sherlock soothingly, despite knowing it will do little to appease John. There’s a storm brewing in his eyes. Sherlock sits up straighter still, his hands tightening around the cup in expectation of the blast.

“Confused things?” replies John, his voice sharp like a whiplash. “Oh, right, I see. You mean confused _me_? Yeah, I get that. Because I’m stupid, your funny little sidekick and housemaid and occasional blogger and physician. Silly of me to think I was something more. Someone to be trusted, someone to confide in, to be involved in your plans. A friend, even. Your only one. My mistake.”

“John, that’s not what I—,” Sherlock begins, but is interrupted by John rising, his chair scraping over the floor.

“What did you mean, Sherlock? Tell me. Use simple, short words and brief sentences so I understand.”

“John, you’re being unreasonab—”

“No, I’m not fucking unreasonable. Sometimes I think I’m the only reasonable person round here. And I’m fucking angry. You claimed I was your friend, but you never trusted me with important stuff, did you? You and Jim, you were the real pals, weren’t you? Hatching big plans together, trying to find out who’s the most clever.”

“Cleverest.” Sherlock can’t stop himself interjecting.

John growls, his eyes flashing. Wrong move. He slaps the table with his flat hand causing the cups and saucers to tingle and the auricula to sway. “Fuck your bleeding grammar. Did you correct him as well while you were playing those fucking stupid little mind games? Games that then turned real, without considering, just one moment, the collateral damage they’d cause? So what, Moriarty wanted to destroy you? We both knew that. But you didn’t get rid of him when you could. No, you served him tea when he came over. Did you offer biscuits, too? Cake? God-damned sandwiches?”

He runs a hand through his hair, glaring at Sherlock. His voice has calmed when he continues. It sounds far more deadly and dangerous now. Not a good sign, Sherlock knows. “You enjoyed it, didn’t you? Enjoyed the attention of someone as brilliant as you. The Woman all over, wasn’t it? You wilfully entered into his little game. It almost ended badly at the Pool, but that didn’t deter you. Oh no, great, unique, brilliant Sherlock Holmes got a taste of the real stakes and God, he began to enjoy them. Always the addict, right? Was he your new drug, Moriarty? Better than cocaine or whatever else you craved before? Every new riddle another fix, every increase in danger a higher dose? Oh, I can see it now, and yes, I’ve been stupid for not seeing it before.”

John steps away from the table and begins to pace, his steps forceful, no trace of his limp. “Ah, you must have had the most perfect, blissful nine months of your life, Sherlock. The time you spent away, it must have been utter heaven. High on riddles and danger, not a care in the world, no one to deter you, to pull you down to the level of us ordinary, boring, stupid creatures. You and your brain and the game, flying high all the time. Makes me wonder why you ever bothered to come back. Why are you here now and be reduced to mingle with the idiots again, endure the dreaded boredom when you could be out there solving puzzles set by mighty Moriarty himself?”

John stops his frantic pacing in the limited space of the kitchen and turns to pin Sherlock with a burning gaze. “Don’t let us pull you down, Sherlock Holmes. Don’t let us numb your brilliance.”

Sherlock looks up at him, enduring his wrath silently. Some of his words hit harder than he’s sure John intended because deep down Sherlock knows he is right. He missed some important points, as usual, but it’s like he put up a mirror in front of his face. The reflection doesn’t look entirely favourable. What does one reply to accusations like these?

“He’s dead,” he says eventually when John’s rant has abated and the doctor is standing quite still but for his somewhat elevated breathing. Sherlock’s voice doesn’t quite sound like his own, rough and tinny, far removed from his usual confident baritone.

“Who?”

“Moriarty.”

“You killed him?”

Sherlock shakes his head. “He shot himself, up on the roof of St. Bart’s the day I … fell. I would have thought his body had been found, but obviously his people were quick at extinguishing all traces of his demise.” _His or Mycroft’s._

John stares at him incredulously. “He shot himself? Why’d he do that?”

“To destroy me,” explains Sherlock.

“But it doesn’t make any sense. Wasn’t he interested in getting the upper hand over you? Why off himself when he could have won?”

“He had to die in order to win, although I daresay he didn’t anticipate having to go to these lengths, the same way I hoped I didn’t have to jump,” explains Sherlock. “But it lay in the nature of the game to force both of us to make the ultimate sacrifice.” He looks at John imploringly. “Will you sit down again and let me explain? If you’re not satisfied afterwards, you can rage at me to your heart’s content. Or leave, whatever you need to do.”

John snorts but slowly settles on his chair again. Mrs. Hudson reaches out to pat his arm, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He drinks some tea, then puts down his cup with a soft _clink_. “You better make this good,” he challenges.

 

**- <o>-**

 

“We’ve already established that in order to prove he ultimately beat me,” Sherlock begins, “Moriarty didn’t just have to kill me. That in itself, though ambitious, would not have posed a problem for him. No, he needed to destroy everything I had become by publicly proving I was a fraud. He had to destroy everything I cared about.”

“Didn’t know you cared about anything but your Work,” interrupts John venomously. “Or anybody.”

Sherlock sighs. John’s not making this easy. But then, this was to be expected. People are easily hurt, and Sherlock realises that he’s underestimated both John’s loyalty and his friendship. It’s not just grief he subjected him to, although arguably that would have been bad in itself. He’s deeply unsettled John’s trust in him by not involving him, by ‘haring off on his own’, by lying to him. That’s not what friends do. Even Sherlock knows that.

What to reply to this accusation, then? Is this the time and place to confess his misery during these past months? His grief at having to leave Baker Street, Mrs. Hudson, John? The loneliness that settled over him like a dark cloud? The fear which almost immobilises him now, wreaking havoc in his normally so meticulously organised brain, the fear that all this talk will be for nothing, that John will get up and leave and don’t look back? No, he can’t tell him all this. John wouldn’t understand, or what’s worse, he’d think Sherlock is lying because he’s seen and heard Sherlock lie and pretend and deceive before. John has rarely seen the world’s only consulting detective entirely sincere, Sherlock realises. There have only been very few instances when he let down his mask, and during those John didn’t really pay attention to the exclusive display of Sherlock Holmes’ inner workings he was granted.

No confession, then. And well for it. The less talk about all those dratted feelings, the better. _Explain so that John will understand, so he’ll believe. Even if you have to lie in order to convince him. Aren’t you good at that? Lying?_

“This is exactly where he started, with the Work,” agrees Sherlock. John looks slightly surprised at this admission and the lack of contra to his hurtful statement. “He knew how important that was to me. Therefore, he needed to discredit me. I’d become popular thanks to some high profile cases discussed by the press and fictionalised on your blog. He needed to cast my authenticity into question. That’s where Richard Brook and Kitty Riley came in.”

“And your brother,” adds John, his gaze steely and cold again, although for a change the ire is not directed at Sherlock.

“Yes, and my brother. Although his revelations to Moriarty were not as surprising to me as you think. I didn’t know he’d tell him so much about my past, go into detail to the extend he did, but I knew he’d blab.”

“How so?”

Sherlock plays with the handle of his cup again. Keeping his hands occupied, soothing his nerves. “Do you remember back at Baskerville, the second time we went there?”

John nods slowly. “You said you had negotiated something with Mycroft. One day of free access.” His eyes narrow and he draws in a sharp breath, running a hand over his face. “Oh God, I’ve been so stupid. I always wondered about it. You didn’t elaborate and I was too preoccupied with the Hounds case to enquire further. And later when your brother told me about his conversations with Moriarty I didn’t think of a possible link, although he must have had him in custody just at the time we were in Dartmoor. So that was the deal? Twenty-four hours free rein at the base and in exchange Mycroft is allowed to chat to Jim about your school and uni friends – or lack thereof –, your medical and criminal records, your stint in rehab. God, I _am_ an idiot, aren’t I? Should have made the connection far sooner.”

Sherlock shakes his head. “I didn’t want you to. It wasn’t important.”

John’s eyes flare again. “Yes, it was. It was bloody important, because it would have helped me understand why you, my best friend – or so I thought –, committed suicide in front of my eyes. Christ, Sherlock, do you have any idea what that did to me, watching you take the plunge after we’d just talked on the phone? I blamed myself for not realising how much this press-campaign had gotten to you. I was convinced I should have paid more attention, that I should have … don’t know, been there more for you more, helped you.”

“You did help me,” says Sherlock quietly. “You had to play your part, and play it convincingly. And you did.”

John’s eyes narrow dangerously. “What part?” he asks, his calm, controlled voice barely betraying his simmering anger. To Sherlock, however, it is visible in the way John’s hands grip the corner of the table convulsively.

Sherlock swallows but holds his gaze. “That of the grieving friend.”

John leans back in his chair. “Jesus,” he breathes, and Sherlock knows that the other’s worst imaginings have been confirmed by his words. He can read the pain and disappointment in John’s eyes.

“I can’t believe it,” John goes on, licking his lips. “You set me up, you subjected me to that amount of guilt and pain because it suited your plan?” He snorts. “And I thought Moriarty was the evil guy in this. Well, hope I didn’t disappoint, at least.”

Sherlock gives a slight shake of head. He finds he can’t meet John’s gaze. Interesting. Terrifying, too. He hears John run a hand through his hair and over his face again. His stubble rasps very slightly.

“You know, Sherlock, I always thought you just pretended to be a heartless bastard who keeps people at arm’s length, insults and irritates them. I seriously, honestly believed that deep down, you were like the rest of us, a decent chap if a little high-strung and weird and socially awkward. I believed that you cared. I knew you’re a first class actor, of course, a top-notch liar, too. Still, I was convinced that you chose and to some extend needed to be the way you are for self-protection, or because you’d been burnt badly in the past. That whole sociopath thing – just pretence, I thought. God, I’ve been such a fool, haven’t I? You’ve just been yourself the entire time. And enjoyed it, too, I bet. Like Jim. Watch people around you dance to the tune you performed. I told you I didn’t believe you were a fraud, and I still stick to that. Because you aren’t, are you? Always a hundred percent genuine selfish arsehole, that’s Sherlock Holmes. It was just my mistake to see in you something else, something … I don’t know … human.” He stands abruptly. “I’ve learned my lesson now. I’m done here.”

Grabbing his jacket, he turns to leave. Sherlock is out of his chair before he has even time to consider the move. “John, please.”

John halts but doesn’t turn, his shoulders tense, the fist not holding the jacket balled so tightly that Sherlock is convinced there must be blood running from it soon because of how John’s fingernails are digging into his flesh.

“You said you’d let me explain,” he goes on, his voice rough. God, he is pleading, he’s imploring John to stay. He’s begging. Because if John doesn’t stay, if he walks out of the kitchen now … the chance won’t come again. Game over.

“Your grief had to look convincing because you’d have been shot otherwise.” The words tumble from Sherlock’s mouth, all careful consideration of how to lead this conversation gone. John has unsettled all order anyway. He needs to be fast now, and convincing. He needs to be truthful. “There was an assassin set upon you. You, Lestrade, and you, Mrs. Hudson.”

Sherlock barely takes note of her horrified intake of air. “Moriarty knew that discrediting me would not be enough. He needed to strike at my most vulnerable spot, my Achilles heel, so to say. Not the Work, nor my professional pride, not even my belief in my own brilliance. No, he had to strike at what I care for most deeply. And John, I _do_ care, even if you find that difficult or even impossible to believe now. I care about my friends, those few I have. He threatened you. He would have had you killed. I had to … – it was part of the game, you see. He set it up so that the world had to see me die in disgrace. I needed to confess it to you, publicly. Hence the phone-call. I didn’t anticipate you’d be there. I didn’t want you to see it. I sent you away, remember? That fake distress call about Mrs. Hudson having been shot. But you sensed something was wrong and you returned, and I had to improvise.

“You asked why Moriarty shot himself, up on the roof. Because he knew that as long as he was alive, he was the one liability to endanger his great design. As long as I had him, I had an opportunity to call back the killers he had sent after you, who even at that very moment had all three of you in their sights. One was stationed at the Yard, ready to kill Lestrade. One was here at Baker Street, the workman seeing to the electricity in the hall. The third was positioned so he could shoot you any moment, a sniper hiding in a building opposite Bart’s. Moriarty knew I would have taken all measures required to recall them, measures even my brother wouldn’t have considered. I’d have taken him apart inch by inch to force him to terminate his command. He realised I wasn’t one of the angels, but like him, ready to do anything to achieve my ends. Therefore, the only way to still best me was to die and rob me of this leverage. And so he shot himself, right in front of my eyes.”

He pauses, breathing hard. He’s leaning forward, supporting himself on the table with both arms. John still hasn’t turned and it bothers Sherlock that he can’t see his reaction. John stands frozen. Sherlock straightens and runs a shaking hand through his hair. “If I was as inhuman as you claim I am, don’t you think I’d have walked away then, content with my victory over my greatest nemesis? Why would I have bothered with the risk of killing myself in the jump, why cause you and the others all this pain? I could have taken my chances, convinced that I was going to be clever enough to prevent your deaths. But in that moment, with Moriarty lying in a pool of his own blood on the roof, that thought was furthest from my mind. I knew that I had to take the hard route, the one I had anticipated, true, even prepared for, but which I had fervently hoped not being forced to use. So I called you, reckoning you’d be far away. And then I saw you alight from that taxi.”

“You told me not to come any closer,” John mutters, his voice barely audible. He still hasn’t turned.

“You couldn’t see me hit the ground,” explains Sherlock. “I had to keep you on the other side of the low building in front of the hospital. There was a laundry vehicle parked beneath where I was positioned. The plan was to jump into that, then cover my head with the blood I had donated earlier, drop to the ground and play dead. The rubber ball pressed into the inside of my elbow helped suppress the pulse in my wrist should you reach me and search for it. The people on the ground, even the cyclist who hit you, they were part of the plan. Molly organised most of it.”

John flinches slightly at the mention. Another betrayal. “She was behaving oddly, … after. I wondered about it, and how she wouldn’t meet, not even for a coffee. I thought it was grief.”

“I asked a lot of her, but she played her part expertly.”

Finally, John turns, and Sherlock almost wishes he didn’t. He seems to be almost vibrating with anger mixed with emotions Sherlock can’t define. “We’re back at the acting-thing, then, aren’t we?” says John. “Your story sounds utterly fantastical, even by your standards. Therefore, I’m inclined to believe it. Greg told me that shortly after your ‘death’, he received an anonymous warning about one of his men being a mole. They investigated secretly. Turned out the guy was a Mafia-trained killer. He was annihilated before he could be taken in for questioning. The officials blamed it on gang warfare, but Greg told me later he’s always suspected there was more to it.”

John cocks his head, giving Sherlock a calculating glance. “The anonymous tip-off, was that you?”

Sherlock nods.

John’s lips narrow. “Did you kill that guy?”

“No. I would have, though. He was on my list. But I deemed it wiser to have Lestrade take him into custody and question him. Unfortunately, others were quicker.”

Slowly, John takes a step towards the table again. “What do you mean by ‘list’?” he asks, suspicion obvious in his voice and expression.

Sherlock lets out a breath and sinks back into his chair. He’s exhausted. He never anticipated this exchange to be this emotionally draining. He’s not good at these things. Turns out, neither is John.

“I knew that my death alone wasn’t going to suffice to keep you and the others safe. I didn’t just have to die, I had to remain dead. The afterlife has certain advantages. People don’t expect you to show up on their doorstep or sabotage their businesses by hacking into their computers and forwarding information about their shady doings to the relevant authorities. ‘Liberty in Death’ – there is definite truth in the saying.”

Intrigued despite better knowledge, John draws closer still and, after a moment’s hesitation, stiffly resumes his seat at the table. He keeps as far away from Sherlock as possible, as if he dreads to be contaminated by the lies and the darkness the other has spun round himself in order to disappear, and which still cling to him in shreds and tatters like a dark veil.

“You mean that’s what you’ve been doing these past months? Hunting down criminals? Moriarty’s people?”

Sherlock nods. “I only capped the tip of the iceberg, though. Jim created a vast empire. Or rather, he expertly joined several existing criminal organisations with established links to all kinds of companies, organisations, even governments. I only took out some of the more illustrious players. There is a lot of work still to be done.”

John leans forward, steepling his hands in front of him on the table. “Why are you here, then?” he asks bitterly. “Seems you’ve had one hell of a time doing what you enjoy most: solving riddles, facing danger, basking in your own brilliance after each successful hit. Why return to the world of the living, make yourself vulnerable again – because that’s why you didn’t contact either of us, isn’t it? Because we were the liabilities to hold you down. Without having to care about us, you could go and do as you pleased. God, I can imagine how you thrived during that time. Sherlock Holmes, the Dark Avenger.”

He snorts derisively, and Sherlock snaps. He’s been keeping his emotions in check as best he could during this entire conversation, but he can’t stand these stabs anymore. He’s weary, he’s tired down to his very bones. He’s quite desperate. And he’s proud. He doesn’t deserve this ridicule nor John’s barely disguised jealousy. John has no idea what he’s been through. He’s been forced to hurt and kill. He himself has been hurt and almost killed. And if he felt joy or triumph after a successful ‘hit’, at the same time he heard his conscience cry out – a conscience he often wished he didn’t have because it only complicated things. He couldn’t delete it, however. He may not be one of the angels, but that doesn’t mean he’s a heartless killing machine, either.

He leans forward, pinning John with a piercing gaze. “Do I look like I thrived?” he asks, his voice a low growl.

He can tell John is taken aback by his reaction. So far he’s been passive, defensive. John didn’t expect him to get angry. John recovers soon from his surprise, however. He looks like he’s gearing up for a sharp retort before thinking better of it. His eyes narrow, not in anger this time but in scrutiny. John does what Sherlock’s always encouraged him to do: he observes. Sherlock can almost feel his glance pass over his gaunt features like a rustle of wind.

John’s eyes take in the dark shadows under Sherlock’s eyes, the prominent cheekbones and the deep vales beneath them, the faint scars on his forehead where the butt of a handgun was used to stun him. They notice the shaggy, self-trimmed hair, the improvised, ill-fitting clothes that are such a far cry from Sherlock’s usual, impeccable attire. They recognise the traces of injury, of malnourishment, of lack of sleep, and if they dare to look even more closely, Sherlock is sure they will see the pain he has borne these nine months.

And Sherlock lets them, for once not putting up any defences. The change of expression is minute, and yet Sherlock thinks he can pinpoint the moment when John understands.

“You look like shit,” is the doctor’s verdict, but there is no more venom in his voice. It’s a simple statement of fact.

“A fair representation of how I feel right now,” admits Sherlock.

“ _You_ feel? I’m still inclined to doubt that,” says John.

There’s a snort and a vehement shake of head from Mrs. Hudson. “You’re idiots, both of you. Men! Do you have any idea how ridiculous your little game here is? Of course he has feelings,” she exclaims, pointing at Sherlock. “He almost cried when I hugged him earlier, and I don’t think I hit him that hard.”

“I didn’t—,” begins Sherlock, feeling warmth rush into his cheeks, but Mrs. Hudson interrupts him.

“I could feel you trembling, and you were sniffing a lot. You crept in here for sentimentality’s sake, and don’t you dare claim otherwise. I know you. You’re not a machine. You came back because you missed your home, and because you missed him.” She points at John. “And me, too, perhaps, or at least my cooking, poor starved thing that you are.

“And you,” she fixes John with a hard glance, “be thankful he’s back. I know you wished for his return often enough. Yes, you’re hurt because he pretended and lied. I’m not done with him, either. His explanation leaves much to be wished for, and I request he tells us the whole story from beginning to end instead of jumping to and fro. But not now. Not before you two have calmed down. I saw your look when you recognised him earlier, John. God, it seemed like your greatest wish had been granted. So don’t behave like a prat and make things more difficult for him than they already are. You know he’s not good with this stuff, talking about feelings and what not. Neither are you, if I may add. But that’s men for you. Clots, the lot of them. I have to say, watching you puts all my soaps to shame, even _Downton Abbey_ and they’ve had some pretty dramatic storylines in the past. Worse than Jeremy Kyle, even, the show you’ve been putting on here all evening.”

She folds her arms in front of her and glares at them. Sherlock feels more heat rise in his cheeks, and notices that John, too, looks somewhat embarrassed. Sherlock doesn’t know _Downton Abbey_ , but the comparison with Jeremy Kyle stings.

Mrs. Hudson shakes her head again. “Will you do me a favour and stop these accusations and this terrible strive now? I’m getting to old for this kind of contention, and in my kitchen no less. It’s bad enough when it’s on the telly. Tomorrow I’m having my bridge meeting. I’ll be out of the house for a few hours and you can use that time to talk things through and rage at each other as much as you like. Upstairs, please, and out of reach of my china because I don’t want to find it shattered against the walls. For now I think I need an extra soother to settle my nerves, otherwise I won’t sleep tonight and be rubbish at cards tomorrow. Although,” and now a shrewd expression appears on her usually kind face, “it would soothe me greatly if I could see you do the one sensible thing.”

“And what would that be?” asks John cautiously.

She inclines her head towards Sherlock. “I can’t see you two at strive with each other, whatever befell in the past. You were best friends. And he’s alive, and he’s come back.”

“Yes, he has,” says John, “but I can’t forgive him so easily.”

“I’m not asking you to forgive him. Not now, at least. But you accused him of not caring. Show him that _you_ care. I know you do. And he can prove to you that he does, too.” She gazes at both of them challengingly. “I need to see you hug.”

John’s eyes widen at that, and Sherlock is equally taken by surprise. John and he – they don’t _hug_. They just … don’t. Never have. Sherlock can recall almost every instance they’ve ever touched. They aren’t many and were mostly brought on by necessity – to alert the other to something, to pass something on, to treat injuries, to keep up. He’s helped John into his jacket (forced him into it on occasion). He tended to invade John’s personal space and made John neglect his by asking him to withdraw things from his pockets. Apparently they passed out on the couch together once, at least according to what photographic evidence suggests. They’ve held hands – one pulling up the other from the side of a building, or when they were handcuffed together. But hugging? Didn’t happen.

They’ve never touched for the sake of it, and why should they have? They aren’t a couple ( _wrong_ , a small voice blares loudly in Sherlock’s mind, _you were and you know it_ ). There’s never been a physical aspect to their relationship. Sherlock’s only recently recognised feelings for John aside – feelings he is sure aren’t reciprocated anyway – there’s never been any indication of anything between them apart from friendship. At the moment there’s not even that, not fully at least, only shards waiting to be glued together again. Hugging doesn’t fit into it at all. Sherlock doesn’t _hug_ , Mrs. Hudson being the sole exception, and even with her it was awkward.

He can feel John’s uneasy gaze both on their former landlady and himself. “Go on,” she insists, both encouragingly and sternly. Sherlock knows he could refuse. Actually, he should. He isn’t sure John will. Authority and obedience and all that, Army-ingrained. No, it’s more fitting for Sherlock to keep his distance. It’s what he’s always done. He bites his lip. His jaw stings, and he recalls John’s gentle hands on his face. He also recalls how he felt when John touched him. Warm and tingly all over. Good. Who knows if he’ll ever get another chance for being that close to his former friend?

Slowly, he rises. John, seeing him move and obviously bowing to the inevitable (in this case Mrs. Hudson’s formidable person), gets up as well and walks round the table. He stops in front of Sherlock.

“This really is like Jeremy Kyle,” he mutters, and despite Sherlock’s nerves fluttering like a swarm of startled starlings and the curry in his stomach coiling like serpents, he has to smile.

“And they say daytime television is devoid of all realism.”

John shakes his head, gazing up at him with a mixture of exasperation and fondness. “Always the last word.”

“Of course.”

And then there’s no more distance between them because both stepped forward at the same time. Sherlock feels John’s arms wrap around him cautiously and his head collide with his collar-bone. John’s hair smells familiar, but not the way it used to smell. _He’s using my shampoo_ , Sherlock realises, and something warm spreads in his chest. _Perhaps only using up the remains_.

He doesn’t quite know what to do with his arms. John starts to draw back, the hug brief and perfunctorily. But Sherlock can’t have it end so soon, before he’s even managed to accommodate the fact he’s having John in his arms. Strange that his brain should be so slow and sluggish whenever John draws close. This didn’t use to be the case. It’s alarming, as if some neural processes are rerouted or even switched off entirely during phases of close contact, as if Sherlock’s thinking machine runs on one processor only, one that creeps and stutters like an old C64.

He wraps his arms round the solid figure of John and holds on, dropping his head to his shoulder. He feels the other’s surprise in the brief tensing of his body, and then John relaxes into the embrace, too, his hands resting on Sherlock’s upper arms and his grip tightening.

“You’re such a fucking bastard, you know that,” John mutters into his shirt. “I should hate you, I really should. I should insist on never seeing you again. Maybe I’ll even do that tomorrow. Most likely I’ll do that tomorrow. But God, today I’m glad you’re back. I thought I was going mad with all this uncertainty and guilt and grief.”

Sherlock holds him even tighter at this confession. Strange how easy it is, how natural it feels, despite the damage it does to his brain. “I’m sorry, John, I really am,” he whispers. “I honestly didn’t expect to hurt you this much. But it was necessary. I couldn’t risk …” He swallows, unable to continue the sentence. “I would do it again.”

John drops his arms and steps back. He gives him a long, steady glance, but Sherlock cannot detect any anger, just grim acceptance. “Yeah, I believe you would. Tell me one thing, Sherlock, before we call it quits for tonight. Was it worth it? All of it? The pain, the confusion, the danger?”

“You’d be dead otherwise.”

“That’s not an answer. And don’t you think I’d have preferred that at times?”

“Don’t say that,” Sherlock hisses. “You had to be safe. You and the others. This is what made all of this worthwhile. Not the game, nor the enjoyment of the hunt. I loathed it.” Well, most of it. There were times when the adrenaline sizzling through him made him light-headed, when he felt elated with the rush of the hunt. But better not tell John that lest he gets the wrong idea. “I loathed what I had to do and what I had to become in order to protect you.”

“I never asked for this kind of protection,” says John defensively. “And don’t you think it would have been easier with me there to help you? Why did you have to do this all on your own?” His face sets hard and cold. “Do you trust me so little?”

_Ah, and we’re back at the core of the matter, aren’t we? Trust._

Sherlock steps back, leans against the counter. He needs some space. This is going to be another difficult cliff to steer clear of in this vast, choppy sea of explanations. “I needed to know you were safe. I had to be sure of it. It would have been preferable for you to be happy, too, but obviously that wasn’t achievable with my improvised plan. I wouldn’t have been able to fully concentrate on what I had to do with you around. You would have distracted me. Not just your presence, but your ... goodness, your morality. There wasn’t room for either where I went and for what I had to do. You wouldn’t have approved of my methods. _I_ didn’t approve of my methods, and you know I can be pretty unscrupulous. What I had to do was more than a bit ‘not good’.”

“But you did it for a noble cause,” interjects John.

“Perhaps. The end justifies the means, is that what you are saying? Is that really so? Or are those evil who do evil deeds, whatever their motivation? I needed to work without a living conscience, John, and had you been with me, you would have been corrupted as well. And I couldn’t risk that. I needed you to be … whole. Undamaged. Grieving, perhaps, but good. Someone to look up to once the job was done, someone who could bring me back from whatever darkness I had fallen into. Had you been with me, we’d both been swallowed whole.”

John stares at him. Swallows. “You’re either the most selfish bastard I’ve ever encountered, or the most selfless.”

Sherlock smiles wryly. “I’d put my money on the former.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another drawing: "[Sherlock after the Fall: Returning (I)](http://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/47040324232/sherlock-after-the-fall-returning-i-41st)"


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it, final chapter. Thanks so much for leaving notes and kudos. It's greatly appreciated.  
> I'm planning to write more for this verse. Next will be a sequel to [_Over Hill and Under Hill_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/477582/chapters/828977). But first I'll do some writing for my Napoleonic Era/Royal Navy AU [_The Passage_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/456124/chapters/784376) which has lain dormant for too long now.  
>  Hope to see you around :).

John looks at him briefly, nods, the corners of his mouth twitching in the faintest of smiles. “At least you’re honest now,” he says.

He glances at Sherlock, meeting the other’s gaze and holding it. He stands awkwardly, though, apparently not knowing what to do or say, still attempting to make sense of the information he has received and of the emotions this has stirred up. It seems to Sherlock he is waiting for his cue to speak or move. But Sherlock himself could do with a hint or two concerning proper behaviour in this situation. He’s as out of his depth as John, if not more.

The awkward, tense silence has become almost unbearable when John finally stirs. He returns to the table but doesn’t sit down. He brushes a crump of biscuit from the surface, then reaches for his tea and takes a gulp. A stalling gesture to veil his indecision; Sherlock recognises it for what it is. Tea solves everything, doesn’t it? It must be almost cold now.

Sherlock yearns for something to occupy his hands, too. He remains standing at the counter. Eventually he grips its ledge behind his back and leans against his hands. _There. Out of the way._ He keeps watching John, realising that Mrs. Hudson is watching him in turn. She’s not very subtle about it. She nods towards the table, once, twice. Ah, there is the hint Sherlock has been waiting for.

Slowly, deliberately, Sherlock moves over and resumes his seat. He cannot shake the feeling that Mrs. Hudson enjoys bossing him around. As part of his penance, he endures it without comment. It has its advantages. He wouldn’t have hugged John of his own accord and it turned out to be unexpectedly enjoyable. Sometimes it’s comforting to be allowed to leave the actual thinking and decision-making to others. He’s grateful for any guidance concerning proper social conduct in this convoluted reunion mess.

“Greg almost lost his job,” John says suddenly. He has moved away from the table. His tea-cup in hand, he is now standing at the sink gazing out into the orange-tinted darkness of the yard where Mrs. Hudson’s bins live, their lids still dented from cushioning a CIA-agent’s fall. Sherlock knows a little about the investigation at NSY. The newspapers wouldn’t shut up about his fall from grace and all those implicated in it received their fair share of media flak.

“But still he didn’t believe you were a fraud,” John goes on quietly. “Nobody who knew you did, after you’d jumped. Even some of those who really didn’t like you eventually took your side.”

He sighs, his shoulders drooping, his hand gripping the cup more fiercely. From the corner of his eye Sherlock notices Mrs. Hudson watching this grip warily. Her china is delicate and can break easily.

“You have no idea what it was like,” John continues. He still hasn’t turned. “Wild theories were making the round. The press said you were a nutter, a freak, a mental case. Called you worse, even. But even those who’d always used these terms at NSY spoke up in your defence after a while. I wasn’t in the mood to appreciate it at the time, but in the months after you’d … –after, there was a massive investigation into all those cases you’d been involved in. They dug out all the paperwork, re-examined it, spoke to witnesses, even some of the criminals you helped convict. I was brought in for questioning on those cases I’d acted as your assistant. They went through your files, my notes, everything. It soon turned out that there was no way you could have set them all up just to manipulate your reputation. You simply had to be genuine. Then that assassin was discovered, and hints about Moriarty’s existence and involvement even in police matters became obvious. In retrospect I believe the ‘British Government’ himself had a hand in providing a clue or two.

“Anyway, it soon became clear that you’d been the victim of a massive libeling campaign. It was acknowledged that the stress of all this ultimately led to your suicide. That you couldn’t cope with the false accusations, that there’d been threats, the lot. Caused a great number of people to reconsider what they’d previously thought about you. I personally heard Sally Donovan rage during a press conference. God, she was so incensed when asked about ‘The Freak’. You should have heard her speech. It was impressive. She didn’t deny what she’d initially thought about you. In fact, she was very candid about it. But she explained the entire investigation and the reasons for it, and man, did she give the reporters burning hell for the rubbish they’d penned about you! She had a big part in the clearing of your name, you know, bigger than Lestrade because he was being investigated himself and his hands were tied. So Donovan did most of the work, and a considerable amount of it was conducted in her spare time. She was quite obsessed with the case, and not just because her own professional integrity was under scrutiny. Never thought I’d see the day she’d step forward to defend you, but she did, and did it well. She came up to me afterwards and apologised for doubting you.

“And that’s not all. Anderson added his bit, too, can you believe it? He said something along the lines of you not having been a proper forensic expert and didn’t always follow procedures, but that you did have scientific expertise and credentials and moreover a gift for observation. He also said you were an arrogant pain in the arse, but that’s fact, too. ‘Course they were feeling guilty for doubting you in the first place, but I also think that deep down they missed you bossing them around at crime scenes.” John drains his cup and turns to look at Sherlock.

“They were pawns in Moriarty’s game, like the rest of us,” says Sherlock with a shrug of pretended nonchalance. His stomach feels funny. Or is it his chest? He tries not to show it, but John’s words have touched him deeply. He secretly hoped that Lestrade would stand by him eventually, but Donovan? Anderson, even? He’s done his best to antagonise the two, and yet they rose beyond that. He decides to be a little less condescending when next he meets them, to indicate his appreciation. Not too much, though, so as not to confuse them too much. A friendly, amicable ‘Freak’? Nah, that wouldn’t do. They’d think him an impostor.

“They just played their parts in my downfall as devised by Moriarty,” Sherlock explains. “Honestly, had they not begun to doubt my professional integrity based on the evidence they had at the time, I would have doubted theirs.”

“So you don’t resent what they’ve done? Back then, after the kidnapping case?”

Sherlock shakes his head. “No. Based on what information she had, Donovan had the right instinct. She is a good police officer – as obviously she proved by vindicating me and clearing my name. She could be an even better one if she wasn’t trying to always do things by the book and the official rules but listen more to her gut. I would have preferred for things to not escalate the way they did, but even I had to play along. And ultimately, Jim designed his own downfall and caused a major disruption in his organisation.”

“Well, _you_ caused that disruption,” amends John. There is a hardness in the way his mouth is set. Sherlock thinks it’s a trace of resentment of having been left behind, of not having been allowed to join his friend in the hunt.

“He provided the incentive and engineered the opportunity. I couldn’t have done what I did had I remained amongst the living.”

John places his cup in the sink and crosses his arms in front of him. “But you’re back. So what now? How are you going to stage your return? You won’t manage to stay ‘dead’ for much longer around here.”

“I don’t intend to. Tomorrow I’ll pay the Yard a visit, and then deal with the inevitable onslaught from the press. You might want to check twice when answering the phone or the door, Mrs. Hudson,” he adds. “Maybe put in the chain. Unless you want representatives of the _Sun_ and the _Daily Mail_ in your very kitchen.”

“Daily Fail,” mutters John with a scowl. Sherlock glances up at him, their eyes meet and … is that a grin John is trying hard to suppress?

“Oh, I’ll deal with them all right,” says Mrs. Hudson airily. “Won’t be the first time, after all.” Her expression darkens. “They beleaguered us here for days after you’d gone. Couldn’t take a step out of the front door. All those cameras, and one question more intrusive than the other.”

“I’ll take them on this time,” Sherlock assures her. He doesn’t look forward to it, but it needs to be done.

“Ha, good luck with that,” remarks John drily. “Don’t expect any help from me. I’m glad if I don’t have to see them again. You got yourself into that mess, you’ll drag yourself out again. I’ve had enough fucking cameras and micros pointed in my face to last a lifetime.”

“Obviously,” states Sherlock, all haughty confidence and swagger. He’s not sure whether John buys it, John who knows and who can read him so well, even after all this time.

“You’ll have a splendid time, I’m sure,” says John. “Boost for your ego. I’m sure Mrs. Hudson will lend you some make-up to cover the bruise.”

Is he taking the piss out of Sherlock? Possible. Warmth settles in Sherlock’s chest and he decides to play along. “I’ll just turn up the collar.”

John snorts, his eyes twinkling. “Don’t forget to wear the hat. They’ll want to see the hat.”

Now Sherlock is sure he _is_ making fun of him. “I don’t know what happened to it.”

“Sort through the boxes upstairs, it’s bound to be in there.”

“I’d be more interested in learning about the whereabouts of my violin,” admits Sherlock.

John drops his gaze to the floor, his cheeks reddening slightly. Embarrassment? Ah. Impending admission of sentiment. Difficult. He runs his tongue over his lips and raises his eyes. “It’s over at my place.”

“Why? You don’t play.”

John’s eyes narrow in his habitual _you must be kidding me_ expression that he reserves for Sherlock being socially obtuse. Sherlock appreciates that this hasn’t changed. He frowns. “Sentiment?” he enquires tentatively.

John snorts again, his eyes flashing. Strange, these constant mood swings. Not like him at all. “Yes, Sherlock, fucking sentiment. I couldn’t bear to live here anymore because everything reminded me of you and I …,” he sighs as if accepting defeat. Bows his head and shakes its wearily, his anger subsiding again. “God, I missed you,” he confesses softly. “Your mess, your experiments, your bloody violin torture in the middle of the night.” He stops, apparently fearing to have said too much. He licks his lips and runs a hand through his hair.

“Mycroft brought it over one day. I almost beat him over the head with it, so angry was I at his nerve to show up on my doorstep. I still haven’t forgiven him, particularly now that I’ve been informed the bastard has been in the know all along but couldn’t be arsed to drop a hint. But I couldn’t damage it. I even looked up how to take care of it so it wouldn’t … Not that I thought you or anybody else would ever play it again …”

“Thanks for looking after it,” Sherlock says gravely, earnestly.

John’s head twitches in a nod. “I’ll give it back when you promise to play decent music for once.” His gaze meets Sherlock’s and he blushes again. They’re not living together anymore. John wouldn’t hear what Sherlock plays. Unless … Sherlock’s heart beats faster. Is John implying that he considers moving back into 221B with him? Nonsense. Can’t be. Far too soon. But couldn’t this be John’s subconscious telling him what he really wants? _Don’t get your hopes up_ , Sherlock tells himself sternly. _Your own return to this place has barely been secured yet._

“I’ll have to practise,” says Sherlock, trying to sound lightly despite not feeling it. “I’ll keep you informed of my progress if you want.”

John looks at him steadily. “You do that,” he says, which is neither yes nor no. A thought seems to cross his mind. “Don’t know what happened to that ridiculous coat of yours, though, nor the scarf. The rest of your clothes should be upstairs, but those two just vanished.” _Along with your body_ , he seems to add but he doesn’t say it out loud.

“Mycroft must have the coat,” muses Sherlock. “The scarf I took with me but lost it eventually.” _Used it to staunch a cut induced by climbing a barbed wire fence. Completely spoiled. Discarded it afterwards. Could do with a new one as winter is slow to shift this year._ “I hope he’s still got it as it’s not available at the shops anymore. And this here is a poor replacement.” He indicates the pea-coat hanging over one of the chairs.

John gives it a cursory glance. “Collar not large enough?”

Sherlock is sorely tempted to smile at the tease. This is banter. Another thing he has missed. He revels in it. “Doesn’t stand up properly,” he replies.

The gaze at each other. This time it’s Sherlock who breaks the connection first by reaching for his cup and taking a sip. Cold. Better than nothing, though. His throat is very dry of a sudden. He hears John clearing his throat, too. There is a rustle of cloth as he lifts his arm to gaze at his watch. He’ll be announcing his departure soon, and as on cue, he does. Sherlock is torn between wanting him to stay and welcoming the fact he won’t have to guard his emotions so closely for the rest of the night. Food and tea have revived him somewhat, but he is still tired. His jaw aches and his head spins with all the new John-data he needs to store in his mind-palace.

John has fetched his jacket and is putting it on. “We'll talk tomorrow, yeah?” He hesitates on his way to the backdoor, half turning to Sherlock who rises from his chair. “Will you be here then?” It almost sounds like a plea.

Sherlock looks at Mrs. Hudson who nods firmly. “Of course he will be here, John, and if I have to lock him in and throw away his bloody lock-picking kit.”

John gives a curt nod. “Better sit on him, too, so he can’t vanish through the window.”

“He’s too bony to make a good pillow, but I’ll do my best.”

John’s eyes find Sherlock’s. “You’d better get some sleep and more food into you because I’m going to be furious with you come tomorrow, when I’ve had time to digest all you told me. Just so you can weather the storm as I might want to beat the living daylights out of you for what you’ve pulled.”

“Thanks for the warning,” says Sherlock quietly, not entirely sure whether this is an empty threat or not. “Be careful,” he adds. “It’s not over yet, and there may be more dangerous people out there than members of the press.”

John’s eyes narrow, his hands flexing. “You know, I’d be glad if they decided to come tonight. I’m in just the right mood for a bit of action. Good night, Mrs. Hudson. Please see to it that the bloody tosser here stays out of trouble for a few hours.”

“Take care, John,” she replies, placing a protective hand on Sherlock’s shoulder.

John nods again, an almost military gesture in its strictness and finally turns to leave. Sherlock, however, has noticed the briefest flicker of his eyes to his own. The gaze stabs into his chest like a laser-beam, causing hope to take root there. John doesn’t hate him. He’s angry, hurt, feels betrayed and confused. All understandable, all things considered. But he doesn’t hate Sherlock, and given time, he might forgive him. And that’s all Sherlock needs to know for the moment.

“You too,” John says, and leaves.

 

**- <o>-**

 

“Your pyjamas and dressing gowns are all still upstairs, so’s your underwear. But of course you know that from nosing around earlier.”

Mrs. Hudson’s words cause Sherlock to stir from where he’s been gazing unblinkingly at the door through which John has departed.

“He’ll come round, you’ll see,” she tells him, squeezing his shoulder. “You must understand you hurt him deeply, lying to him like that, even if it was for a noble cause. But he’ll see reason in time. He’s missed you terribly, you know. You have to be patient now, difficult though that’d be. Go upstairs. I’ll bring you some fresh linens for the bed, and towels and some toiletries.”

“You want me to stay?”

She gazes at him with an expression _he_ usually reserves for unobservant people. “Of course, you silly boy. As if you’d be happy anywhere else. And as if I’d be happy with you anywhere else. The flat has been empty for too long now. You need a good night’s rest, and you did hear John’s words. I promised to keep you here. What do you want for breakfast?”

“I thought you weren’t my housekeeper,” Sherlock says with a faint smile.

She lightly whacks his shoulder. “Don’t get cocky with me, young man. Up you go. And take that dratted skull with you. I’m sure you saw it in my bedroom when you were searching for the first aid kit. I’ve been staring at it and it’s been staring at me for the longest time. I still can’t understand what you see I that awful thing.”

“It helps me think, although I admit it can be trying company at times.”

“So it can, yes. See to it you get your John back for keeping you company. And for looking after you – and the flat. Remember the conditions I set you.”

 _My_ John? Well, he’s always thought of John in possessive terms. Bit not good, that. But to have another person voice it feels … good. It validates his claim, a claim he thinks he must re-stake in clear terms now that there is a vague threat to it.

“That’s not entirely up to me, is it?” he replies instead. “Whether John is going to return or not.” _Whether he’ll forgive me or not._

Mrs. Hudson looks up at him shaking her head. “Of course he will. You must give him time to sort out his bit, though.”

“There’s a woman,” Sherlock blurts out, hoping he at least kept his voice neutral so as not to betray his jealousy. Is it jealousy? Must be. _His John …_

Mrs. Hudson gives him a shrewd glance. She knows. He is sure she knows. Is he really this obvious? Or is it the experience of a long life with her own stab at romance and heartbreak and countless episodes of television soap opera that have made her such an expert at reading hidden emotions and desires? Should he watch more _Coronation Street_ and _Eastenders_ to try and fill the gaps in his own knowledge of these matters? The thought makes him crinkle his nose in disgust. There must be a less mind-eating way.

“Yes, or so I’ve heard,” she replies, and he thinks he can hear a trace of caution. “Mrs. Turner’s married ones saw them out one evening. I don’t know much about her. But she makes him happy, it seems. He didn’t go out much … after. I was very worried about him for a while. Had therapy again, poor thing, which did help a little, I think. I heard they met at work.”

She gives him a stern glance. “Don’t you dare and interfere, whatever you think of it. It’s none of your business. Let John sort this out.”

“Why would I interfere?” he asks innocently, trying to deflect her implication.

“Why did you jump off a bloody roof for him?” _Touché._

“For you, too. Oh, and scrambled eggs and toast would be good. And some honey if you’ve got it.”

“Get out of my sight,” she chides him, but mildly. “And don’t forget the skull.”

 

**- <o>-**

 

Billy cradled under his arm, Sherlock returns upstairs. He switches on the light and walks over to the fireplace to put the skull on the mantlepiece where it belongs, once more running his hand over the bone. Glancing up, he sees his reflection in the mirror, the bruise on his jaw standing out on his pale skin. Gingerly, he touches it. Not long ago John's hand rested there. The thought alone causes his breath to hitch and his heartbeat to accelerate. Is this what infatuation feels like? Love?

And how to go on from this realisation? What to do? What is John going to do? The conversation today went better than Sherlock feared, but there still lies a long process of reconciliation ahead. There's going to be another confrontation tomorrow, more discussion, more excuses. But things will mend, eventually. John isn't someone to hold a grudge indefinitely, or is he?

With a sigh, Sherlock leaves the fireplace to head towards his room. He really needs that shower and a brush of teeth, and then sleep, sleep, sleep. A sleep free of fear of pursuit or discovery, free of nightmares of John dying or rejecting him, hopefully. Just peaceful slumber. He hasn't truly rested for nine months.

Tonight should be fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fanart for this chapter: "[Sherlock after the Fall: Returning (II)](http://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/48124545196/sherlock-after-the-fall-returning-ii-42nd)" 

**Author's Note:**

> Artwork for this story can be found at my tumblr as part of my "[Sherlock after the Fall](http://khorazir.tumblr.com/tagged/after-the-fall)"-series.
> 
> [Hamstermoon](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Hamstermoon/pseuds/Hamstermoon) has made stylish bookcovers for my entire [Over/Under](http://archiveofourown.org/series/34840) series. Here's the one for this story: [Cover for _Over Stair and Under Stair_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2299757). Thank you so much!


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